FLIGHT OF BIRDS. 
319 
the winter, and thus furnish nourishment for the birds 
Miich arrive upon the melting of the snow.* The 
Snow hunting, moreover, feeds, as Temminck remarks, 
ftlso on insects, and Wilson found their stomachs filled 
"itli shell fish, 
“ FabrieiuSjf and other writers, mention, that the male 
loudly serenades the female during- incubation, but 
that his song ceases when the young are hatched. Sir 
George Mackenzie informs us, that the song is pleasing, 
'Hid resembles the first three or four notes of the robin ; J 
Miilst Marten, who, perhaps, was not musical, says, ‘ 1 
''an fell nothing of its singing, only that it whistleth 
11 little, as birds use to do when they are hungry.’ 
Spitzb. p. 73.” — Richardson. 
GENUS IV. — COL VMBA. 
36 . COLUM1IA MI OR A TORI A. THE PASSENCER PIGEON. 
AUDUBON, PLATE I. XII. 
The most important feature in the natural history of 
these birds is their migration. These migrations are 
c aused by the necessity of providing for food, and, con- 
Se quently, they do not take place at any fixed period or 
Reason of the year. Indeed it happens sometimes, that 
an abundant supply of food in one district, will keep 
these birds absent from another for years. 
Their great power of flight enables them to pass 
° v er vast, tracts of country in a very short time, 
pigeons, for example, have been killed in the neighbour- 
hood of New York, with their crops still filled with 
Gee, collected by them in the fields of Georgia and 
Carolina, the nearest points at which this supply could 
possibly be obtained ; and as it is well ascertained, that, 
'J'ring to their great power of digestion, they will 
< *«compose food entirely in twelve hours, they must 
* On their first arrival they generally feed on grass seeds ; but 
as the summer advances, they live much on worms, and are then 
so much esteemed.— H earne, l. c . 
t Fauna Grcenl . p. 119. 
1 Travels in Iceland , p. 341. 
