THE PARTRIDGE (OR RED MOUNTAIN) DOVE. 85 
hen is very similar to the cock; her forehead is 
less white and her colour rather duller. I have 
no notes on the wild life of this dove. 
LIFE IN CAPTIVITY. 
I have only once kept a pair of this rare little 
dove. I bought them in March, 1904, for the very 
moderate sum of 20/-. I found them very wild; 
they refused to let me come near them, and in 
dashing about the hen grazed her head badly. I 
did not find them very interesting; they were very 
like the White-winged dove, but not so pretty, 
being much the same colour and having the same 
sky-blue skin round the eyes, though of course the 
white band across the wings (which is such an 
attractive point in the White-winged dove) was 
absent. 
My birds did not nest whilst I had them, and 
eventually one died, and I was left with the odd 
bird. 
In 1897 the late Mr. O. E. Cresswell received 
an importation of 6 Wells’ doves from Tobago. 
He was much struck with the colour of the blue 
skin round the eye, and describes them as follows: 
“Their tints are soft and pretty—back olive- 
brown, the baclx of the neck having a purple sheen, 
under parts white shading into pink. I have not 
found them interesting; after nine months they 
are still shy, hardly ever utter a sound, and take 
no notice of each other. I think I made a mistake 
in not putting them out last summer.’’ Dr. 
Butler had a hen Wells’ dove that laid between 
three and four eggs every month and sat by her- 
self the full time on all eggs she did not break. 
She died in 1906, having been laying and sitting on 
clear eggs continuously since the beginning of the 
previous year. 
A specimen of Wells’ dove was presented to the 
Zoo by Mr. S. Wells in 1886. Mr. J. C. Pool 
received about five of these doves in 1898 from 
Tobago. He considered them one of the most 
timid doves he had ever met, and somewhat 
irritable, running to drive any small birds away 
that might perch on a branch near. 
THE PARTRIDGE (OR RED MOUNTAIN) 
DOVE. 
(Geotry gon montana). 
Habitat.—Tropical America in general (includ- 
ing West Indies), north to Cuba (accidentally at 
Key West) and Eastern Mexico (Mirador), and 
south to Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru. 
Length.—About 9 inches. Shape, rounded, with 
rather short tail. 
Colouring.—The adult male has the upper parts 
bright chestnut, more or less flushed with a purple 
iridescence, chiefly on neck and back. Breast 
pale purplish-brown, softened to white on throat 
and chin; a band of deep chestnut runs forward 
from the ear to the throat; under parts and tail 
coverts buff white (Gosse). The hen is quite 
different from the cock. The top of the head and 
back is chocolate brown, with a slightly greenish 
tinge, the tail is brown; forehead and cheeks chest- 
nut. The top and sides of the upper part of the 
breast is also brown, but warmer and rather 
lighter in shade than the back; the chin, lower 
breast and sides buff. The beak basal half 
crimson, the remainder horn-colour; the legs are 
flesh-colour, the iris very pale yellow-brown, the 
skin round it being the same colour as the beak, 
namely, rich crimson. The hen is slightly smaller 
than the cock. 
WILD LIFE. 
Gosse writes of the Red Mountain dove that it 
prefers a well-wooded country where the woods 
are filled with bushes as well as trees. He says: 
“It is essentially a ground pigeon, walking in 
couples or singly, seeking for seeds or gravel on 
the earth.”” He noted that it fed on the fallen 
berries of the pimento, the physic nut, and once 
a pair of these doves were seen eating the large 
seed of a mango that had been crushed. Small 
slugs have also been found in its gizzard, and it 
is very fond of the ripe berries of the sweet-wood. 
On two occasions Mr. Gosse made a_ close 
inspection of nests of this dove. He says: ‘As 
we crept cautiously towards the spot the male bird 
flew from it. I was surprised at its rudeness; it 
was nothing but half-a-dozen decayed leaves laid 
one on another, and on two or three dry twigs, 
but from the sitting of the birds it had acquired 
a slight hollowness, about as much as that of a 
skimmer. It was placed on the top (slightly sunk 
among the leaves) of a small bush, not more than 
3 feet high, whose glossy foliage and small white 
blossoms reminded me of a myrtle. There were 
two young, recently hatched; callow and peculiarly 
misshapen, they bore little resemblance to birds.”’ 
In a second nest were two eggs of ‘‘a very pale 
buff colour; sometimes, however, they are con- 
siderably darker.” The poor little cock was 
sitting on this nest when he was shot dead. To 
shoot this gentle little dove at all would seem cruel 
sport, but to shoot a ‘‘sitting’’ bird seems to me 
no sport at all, but wanton barbarity. In the days 
when Gosse wrote, some 63 years ago, the bird 
life in Jamaica was different from today. He 
tells us of a boy who ‘‘caught 20 or more” of the 
Partridge dove, “‘in springes during two or three 
days in February.”” Mr. Sutcliffe, who has just 
returned from Jamaica this year, says of the Part- 
