396 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



weed seeds from that field of oats, or elsewhere, for their after- 

 noon meal. It is evident that Doves feeding on the newly 

 sown fields may do more good by destroying weed seed than 

 harm by eating grain. Prof. F. E. L. Beal of the Biological 

 Survey reports that nine thousand two hundred seeds of 

 common weeds were found in the stomach and crop of a Mourn- 

 ing Dove; he found seven thousand five hundred seeds of the 

 yellow wood sorrel {Oxalis strictor) in another stomach and six 

 thousand four hundred seeds of barn grass in another. The 

 examination of the contents of two hundred and thirty-seven 

 stomachs showed over ninety-nine per cent, of vegetable food. 

 Small grains were found in one hundred and fifty of the stom- 

 achs, and constituted thirty-two per cent, of the food con- 

 tents; but three-fourths of this was waste grain picked up 

 from the ground after harvest, or from the roads or stock- 

 yards. The principal and almost constant diet is weed seed, 

 which constitutes sixty-four per cent, of the annual food 

 supply. These seeds vary in size from the largest to the most 

 minute; some are so small as to seem beneath the notice of so 

 large a bird as the Dove. This useful bird should be protected 

 at all times in New England. 



Note. — A specimen of the little Ground Dove {Columhigallina passerina 

 terrestris) was taken by Dr. George Bird Grinnell in October, 1862, near 

 New York Citj^ and was identified by J. W. Audubon. Dr. Grinnell states 

 that he saw another in New York possibly twelve years later. ^ So far as I 

 am aware this southern species has never been noted in New England. 



' Eaton, E. H.: Birds ol New York, Memoir 12, New York State Museum, 1910, pp. 389,390. 



