70 Bulletin of the 



pigeon will flutter its wings. The flock has seen the flyers, which has drawn 

 their attention and they now have their eyes on the stool pigeon and are 

 sailing around and preparing to alight and suddenly they come pouring down 

 on the net bed. 



Were you ever excited in your life? Did you ever have the "buck 

 fever?"' With unsteady nerves you reach for the net rope. One moment 

 more of awful suspense, a sudden jerk and the net dancing four thousand 

 kinds of quicksteps, is sprung. You rush to the edge of the net and hold 

 it down. One by one my father pinched their heads, which was the usual 

 way of killing pigeons in a net. 



The pigeons are now carried to the bough-house and the net would 

 again be set, the flyers would be brought in and we would be ready for 

 another haul. Hundreds of pigeons we have taken in this manner in a single 

 day. But I think I hear some one ask, what did you do with so many 

 pigeons? I may answer by saying that there was not much market for them 

 during those heavy flights, so we skinned out their breasts and placed them 

 in a weak brine for a few days, after which they were strung on strings — 

 perhaps one hundred on each line. They were then hung up to dry and we 

 used them in the same manner as dried beef. After being thus cured they 

 would last indefinitely. 



But here comes another inquiry — how did these pigeons see to eat? 

 Did we unblind them? No, we held the mouths open between the thumb and 

 finger and poured wheat down their capacious throats, which they eagerly 

 swallowed when hungry. Wheat seemed to be the favorite food of the wild 

 pigeon, but in its absence they would eat most any kind of grain and would 

 feast abundantly on beech nuts and acorns, and when pressed by hunger 

 would eat most any kind of weed seeds. 



The Passenger Pigeon, like the whole family (Colnmbidac) of pigeons 

 and doves, has the power of disgorging inferior food when a better quality 

 of food is found, ample proof of which is found by watching an old pigeon 

 or dove feed her young. The food is swallowed by the old bird and then 

 disgorged into the mouths of their young. The obnoxious weed commonly 

 called Red-rod, known better by the old settlers of Michigan by the name 

 of pigeon weed, was supposed to have been carried hundreds of miles by 

 the passenger pigeons and then disgorged upon the wheat fields, where it 

 took root and grew, thus giving the name pigeon weed. Their object, of 

 course, was to fill their crops with a better quality of food. 



As to their breeding grounds* I cannot speak from personal observations, 

 although many of them were found in those days in Michigan, but none of 

 them, as far as I am able to learn, were found in this (Wayne) county. I 

 was only a boy then, yon know, but since that time I have lived to see the 

 pigeon swept from the shores of this state and in fact the whole of the 

 American continent. 



And those sights which I have seen of the grand ariel flights of the 



*See "An article by William Brewster on 'The Present Status of the Wild Pigeon 

 as a Bird of the United States, with Some Notes on Its Habits,' (Auk, vi, 1889 pp. 285- 

 291), gives much information concerning tlie recent history of the bird in Michigan, one 

 of its last strongholds. According to an informant of Mr. Brewster's, the last nesting 

 in Michigan of any importance was in 1881. 'It was of only moderate size — perhaps eight 

 miles long.' The largest known Michigan nesting occured in 1877 or 1878. It was 

 twenty-eight miles long and averaged three or four miles in length." Chapman: 

 Handbook of Birds of East. N. A. 6 Ed. (1902), p. 188. 



