BENGAL GREEN PIGEON 17 



several consecutive shots at the Bengal Green Pigeon, I was inclined 

 to shoot behind the smaller birds unless I remembered this fact. 



All Green Pigeons have the habit of clapping their wings over 

 their backs when first taking to flight, and it may sometimes be heard 

 when the birds dip in their flight and then suddenly rise again. 

 Always, I believe, it is to be heard just as the birds commence to rise 

 and not, as with domestic Pigeons, at other times of their flight ; also, 

 in the Green Pigeon, the soimd is not so starthngly loud as it is when 

 made by the birds of the genera Columba and Turtur. 



The food of the Bengal Green Pigeon is, of course, entirely 

 vegetarian, and principally frugivorous, and above all it seems to 

 deUght in the fruit of the various species of Ficus. The gapes of all 

 Pigeons are large for the size of the bird, besides being soft and very 

 elastic, otherwise it would be almost incredible the size of the fruit 

 they can swallow. Plums and similar hard fruit they swallow whole, 

 and often these are as large as the bird's head, only two or three 

 being containable in the crop at the same time. Larger and 

 soft fruit, such as figs, they tear to pieces, pulling off great lumps 

 which they swallow whole. They are very greedy, and their digestion 

 is extremely rapid, so that they are able to indulge their appetite, and 

 the amount these birds wiU eat is enormous. In confinement they 

 consume almost any sort of grain, and I once shot a pair out of an 

 Indian cornfield whose crops were full of the ripe, but still soft, 

 maize. Whether these birds were feeding on the ground or not, it 

 was impossible to say, but probably they were climbing about on the 

 maize stems and tearing the grains from the growing cobs, though there 

 were at the time a good many of these latter lying on the ground. 



My birds in captivity ate plantains greedily and would also eat 

 the inside of oranges, iavariably picking out the pips first before 

 eating the fleshy part. Peaches and apricots they also ate, swallowing 

 even the stone — ^kernel, sheU and all, complete. In addition to fruit 

 and grain they also ate a certain amount of green food such as lettuce, 

 and once I saw a bird puUing some green shoots of rice which had just 

 sprouted up in the comer of the aviary. They were also partial to 

 bread and mUk. 



