7 
The Mourning Dove 
being animal food. Wheat, oats, rye, corn, barley and buckwheat were 
found in 150 of the stomachs, and constituted 32 per cent of the total 
food, and three-fourths of this amount was wasted 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 it is in good 
condition, and most of this was eaten in the months of July and August. 
Corn, the second in amount, was all damaged grain taken from the fields 
after the harvest, or from roads or stockyards 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. Some of the seeds eaten were so minute that it would seem 
that none but the smallest species of birds would eat them, and then 
only when driven to do so by lack of other food. Some instances of the 
vast numbers of seeds that individual birds consumed will be of interest. 
In one stomach were found 7,500 seeds of the yellow wood-sorrel ; in 
another 6,400 seeds of barn-grass or fox-tail; and a third had eaten 
the following combination: slender joint-grass, 2,600; orange hawkweed, 
4,820; hoary vervain, 950; Carolina cranesbill, 120; yellow wood-sorrel, 
50; panicum, 620; and other weed-seeds of various Enormous 
kinds, 40 ; making a total of 9,200. None in the above- Consumption 
written list is useful, and most of them are noxious. of Weed_seeds 
“The three Doves in question benefited the farmers, on whose land 
they fed, by destroying 23,100 prospective weeds. Is there a farmer 
in this land who would not welcome as a friend the man who would offer 
to uproot and kill 23,100 weeds? Yet, because the Doves go about 
silently and unobtrusively, and make no loud boasts about the good they 
are doing, they are thought of little or no value. In many parts of the 
country this valuable, harmless and gentle creature is considered a 
game bird, and is shot during a large part of the year. It is a question 
for the farmers to settle whether they will permit anyone to kill on their 
land birds that annually destroy tons of the seeds of pigeon-grass, rag- 
weed, smartweed, bindweed, and many other noxious plants, and are thus 
worth so much as helpers on farms. The matter resolves itself into a 
question of figures, i. e., dollars and cents to the farmers. If three 
Doves, at one meal, destroy 23,100 weed-seeds, and thus prevent the 
growth of the same number of prospective weeds, how much good will all 
the Doves on a farm or in a State, or in the country at large, accomplish? 
Or, to present the case in another way, how much will it cost in time, labor 
and actual cash to destroy what the Doves will eat if they are protected 
and encouraged to remain on the farms? The farmers in the United 
States spent, in 1899, the enormous sum of $365,305,921 for labor; how 
much of this was paid for killing weeds, and how much of it could 
have been saved if no Doves had been killed but all had been protected 
and permitted to perform the work that the Creator designed them to do? 
The Dove is far too valuable an auxiliary to the agriculturist to have 
it classed as a game bird. Its value consists in its weed-destroying activ- 
ities, and not in the few ounces of food it may furnish. ,, 
