78 The Passenger Pigeon 



locality a nesting is to form. The indications are soon 

 known throughout the fraternity and the gathering of 

 the clans commences. The netters follow up the pigeons 

 in their flight for hundreds of miles. The past year 

 there have been nestings in Pennsylvania, Ohio and 

 Michigan, though in the former two States they were of 

 short duration, as they soon broke up and the birds 

 turned their flight to the northwest. The flight of a 

 pigeon is, under favorable conditions, sixty to ninety 

 miles an hour, and these birds of passage leaving the 

 Pennsylvania forests at daybreak can reach the Michi- 

 gan nesting grounds by sunset. 



Many of the little travellers came from the westward, 

 crossing the stormy waters of the lake with the speed 

 of a dart. From the four quarters of the globe, seem- 

 ingly, they gather. Over the mountains, lakes, rivers, 

 and prairies they speed their aerial flight, through 

 storm, in sunshine and rain. Actuated as if by a com- 

 mon impulse toward the same object, their swift wings 

 soon reach the summer nursery, to which they are 

 drawn from points hundreds of miles distant by an in- 

 stinct which surpasses human comprehension. 



No less remarkable is the wisdom with which the 

 nesting places are chosen, they being always in the 

 densest woods, not in large and heavy timber, but gen- 

 erally in smaller trees with many branches, cedars, and 

 saplings. The presence of large quantities of mast, 

 which is the principal food of these birds, especially 



