DOVES 125 



General habits. — Mourning doves are most frequently found 

 in cultivated fields, pastures, and stubble fields, where they 

 seek their food of weed seed and waste grain. Except during 

 the nesting season they occur mostly in flocks of varying size. 

 They regularly visit fields containing gravel, v/hich they con- 

 sume in large quantities and in the summer months about 

 sundown they visit water holes to drink before going to roost. 

 The large flocks which are found during the winter months 

 break up during April, and nesting begins with some pairs 

 early in that month or even ip March. 



The nest is placed usually on a horizontal limb of a tree from 

 8 to 12 or occasionally as high as 40 feet above the ground 

 or sometimes on the ground or in low bushes ; it is a shallow, 

 loosely-built platform of sticks, pine needles, and grass, and 

 contains two pure white eggs. Several broods are reared, and 

 the breeding season extends through the summer till Septem- 

 ber. 



Food habits. — The food of this species as investigated by the 

 Biological Survey has been described as follows: 



The food of the dove consists of seeds of weeds, together with 

 some grain. The examination of the contents of 237 stomachs 

 shows that over 99 per cent of the food consists wholly of 

 vegetable matter, less than 1 per cent being animal. Wheat, 

 oats, rye, corn, barley, and buckwheat were found in 150 of 

 the stomachs, and constituted 32 per cent of the total food. 

 However, three-fourths of this amount was waste grain picked 

 up in the fields after the harvesting was over. Of the various 

 grains eaten, wheat is the favorite, and is almost the only one 

 taken when in good condition. Most of it was eaten in the 

 months of July and August. Corn, the second in amount, was 

 all old, damaged grain, taken from the fields after the harvest 

 or from roads or stock yards in summer. The principal and 

 almost constant diet, however, is the seeds of weeds. These 

 are eaten at all seasons of the year. They constitute 64 per 

 cent of the annual food supply, and show very little variation 

 during any month.* 



GROUND DOVE; "MOURNING DOVE": Chaemepelia 

 passerina passeHna (Linnaeus). 



State records. — The ground dove is a local and rather un- 

 common resident in the southern third of the State. On a 



•Beal, F. E. L., Farmers' Bull. 64, p. 6, 1904. 



