126 



THE OOLOGTST 



Pair Mounted Passenger Pigeons owned by Ottomar Reinecke, 

 Buffalo, N. Y. 



Passenger Pigeon. 



Ectopistes migratorus. 

 By Ottomar Reinecke. 



The photo of the above Pigeons re- 

 calls recollections of their occurrence 

 in this section of the state. When 

 they flew in great swarms over the 

 City of Buffalo, the gunners went on 

 the flat roofs, and from the southeast 

 corner of Genesee and Oak streets, 

 quite a number were shot. A small 

 flock lit on the roof of a one-story 

 building on the northwest corner of 

 Michigan and Genesee streets. The 

 gunners went in large numbers in the 

 woods near Genesee and Fongerou 

 streets and shot a great many, mostly 

 on Sundays, and the following day, 

 Mr. Albert Liegele, our veteran brew- 

 er, who occupied the Brewery on Gen- 

 esee street, near the Tollgate, went 

 into the nearby woods and picked up 

 the Pigeons which were lying around 

 dead and wounded, and his employees 

 were glad to get such a dainty morsel 

 to eat. 



The Buffalo Gunners had their shoot- 



ing grounds out Main street, men like 

 Steve Roberts, Charles Gerber, Arthur 

 D. Bissell, Ed. Fish, George NeAvman 

 and others secured large crates full 

 of live Wild Pigeons and it took some 

 very good shots with their muzzle-load- 

 ers. At that time we had no breech 

 loaders to bring down the birds, which 

 when released from the traps, flew 

 away like greased lightning. 



At that time the Pigeons were in 

 such large flocks from one end of the 

 horizon to the other that they ob- 

 structed the rays of the sun. 



From the Hudson Bay to the Gulf 

 of Mexico and from the Rocky Moun- 

 tains to the East coast, the Passenger 

 Pigeon inhabited all the states of 

 North America. 



As our great Ornithologist, Audubon, 

 said, it flies with great rapidity, from 

 300 to 400 miles in an hour, or much 

 over one mile in a minute, which has 

 been proven by the contents of her 

 stomach, which contained rice from 

 the flelds of Georgia and the Carolinas 

 when shot near New York. He wrote 

 in the fall of 1813: 



