166 THE MOURNING DOVE. 



for these attentions when it seems sufficiently mature to take 

 care of itself. 



The remarkable sagacity of these young birds in discov- 

 ering each other has been well noted by ornithologists. I 

 have seen them in very considerable flocks already by the 

 20th of June, and later in the season they gather into flocks, 

 which are simply immense. 



Considering how many of our summer residents are 

 hard to find during the moulting period, it may not after all 

 appear so strange that the Cow Bird seems absent during a 

 certain part of summer. In late summer and early 

 autumn they are wont to assemble in large flocks, some- 

 times quite destructive, and, migrating late in autumn, 

 spend the winter in great numbers in the Southern States. 

 They are said to deposit their eggs from 35° to 68° north. 

 General habitat. North America. 



Plain in form and color, without musical attractions, of a 

 disgusting diet, an arrant free-lover, wholly without 

 parental affection, a destroyer at the very threshold of the 

 life of many of our most interesting birds, in short, in all 

 respects of most distasteful and infamous habits, this grand 

 ornithological nuisance would seem to claim no considera- 

 tion whatever, except as an anomaly, being a most flat con- 

 tradiction of the laws of its kind, and hence an addition to 

 nature's great variety. 



THE MOURNING DOVE, 



On the 10th of April one of my parishioners called my 

 attention to what he called a flock of Plover in a field 

 where he had raised corn the year before. The flock, con- 

 sisting of some twenty, turned out to be Mourning Doves 

 (Zenmdura caroUnensis). Rarely do we see so many together 

 at any time of year in this locality. Occasionally, how- 



