122 BIRDS OF ALABAMA 



The birds feed in woodland, in mountain-side clearings 

 where blueberries abound, and on prairies adjacent to timber 

 tracts. When alarmed by the approach of a man, they usual- 

 ly run for some distance before taking wing. 



Food habits. — Examination of the stomachs and crops of 16 

 wild turkeys, most of them taken in the Southern States (Vir- 

 ginia to Florida) showed their food to consist of vegetable 

 matter, 84 per cent, and animal matter, 16 per cent. The 

 vegetable matter included fruit (33 per cent), mast and other 

 seeds (25 per cent), and "browse," (25 per cent). The ani- 

 mal food was composed largely of insects, chiefly grasshoi)- 

 pers, of which the bird is very fond. Among the various 

 articles of the turkeys' vegetable diet the following are men- 

 tioned by Judd: Pine seeds, acorns, chinquapins, chestnuts, 

 pecans, persimmons, tubers of the ground nut, wild cherries, 

 grapes, mulberries, blackberries, wild strawberries, and ber- 

 ries of the dogwood, juniper, holly, tupelo, spicebush, and wax 

 myrtle. Among the insects eaten are grasshoppers, leaf hop- 

 pers, cotton worms, yellow jackets, cucumber beetles, and 

 caterpillars.t 



PIGEONS AND DOVES: FamUy Columbidae. 



PASSENGER PIGEON; WILD PIGEON: Eetopistes 

 canadensis (Linnaeus) .J 



Staie records and habits. — ^Wild pigeons, once enormously 

 abundant, are now extinct. They occurred in immense flocks 

 in spring and fall and many spent the winter in the State, 

 roving over the country in search of mast, which formed their 

 principal food. McCormack, describing the last great flight 

 in Colbert County, which occurred in the fall of 1881, says : 



During that fall immense flocks of thousands and millions 

 of birds were seen passing every evening and morning to and 

 from their roosting place near Courtland. From about four 

 o'clock until after dark was the time for the evening flight, and 

 during that time not five minutes elapsed that a flock could 

 not be seen in some direction. It was a common thing to see 

 flocks extending as far as the eye could reach from west to east 



Uudd, 9. D., BioL Surv. Bull. 24, pp. 49-62, 1905. 



iEctoplates mlsTStoriug of the A. O. U. Check-list j for chanse of name see The Ank, 

 vol. M, p. 268, 1919. 



