Pigeons and Doves 



red; two middle tail feathers longest; all others banded with 

 black and tipped with ashy white. Wing coverts sparsely 

 spotted with black. Flanks and underneath the wings 

 bluish. 

 Female — Duller and without iridescent reflections on neck. 



Range — North America, from Quebec to Panama, and westward 

 to Arizona. Most common in temperate climate, east of 

 Rocky Mountains. 



Season — March to November. Common summer resident ; not 

 migratory south of Virginia. 



The beautiful, soft colored plumage of this incessant and 

 rather melancholy love-maker is not on public exhibition. To see 

 it we must trace the a-coo-o, coo-o, coo-oo, coo-o to its source in 

 the thick foliage in some tree in an out-of-the-way corner of the 

 farm, or to an evergreen near the edge of the woods. The slow, 

 plaintive notes, more like a dirge than a love song, penetrate to 

 a surprising distance. They may not always be the same lovers 

 we hear from April to the end of summer, but surely the sound 

 seems to indicate that they are. The dove is a shy bird, attached 

 to its gentle and refined mate with a devotion that has passed 

 into a proverb, but caring little or nothing for the society of other 

 feathered friends, and very little for its own kind, unless after the 

 nesting season has passed. In this respect it differs widely from 

 its cousins, the wild pigeons, flocks of which, numbering many 

 millions, are recorded by Wilson and other early writers before 

 the days when netting these birds became so fatally profitable. 



What the dove' finds to ardently adore in the "shiftless 

 housewife," as Mrs. Wright calls his lady-love, must pass the 

 comprehension of the phoebe, which constructs such an exquisite 

 home, or of a bustling, energetic Jenny Wren, that " looketh well 

 to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idle- 

 ness." She is a flabby, spineless bundle of flesh and pretty 

 feathers, gentle and refined in manners, but slack and incompe- 

 tent in all she does. Her nest consists of a few loose sticks, 

 without rim or lining ; and when her two babies emerge from 

 the white eggs, that somehow do not fall through or roll out of 

 the rickety lattice, their tender little naked bodies must suffer 

 from many bruises. We are almost inclined to blame the incon- 

 siderate mother for allowing her offspring to enter the world 

 unclothed — obviously not her fault, though she is capable of just 



297 



