Mar., 1911 
DOVES ON THE PIMA RliSERVATION 
55 
nest I wanted to collect, but the date was so late that I decided to watch and see if 
the young could hatch and mature. They hatched October 16, but two days later I 
found both young cold and dead in the nest. Nests ranged from two and a half to 
twenty-five feet from the ground, with an average of ten feet. In regard to loca- 
tion, two were in cottonwoods, two in pear trees, one in a willow and two in the 
shrub Baccharis. 
The nests are fairly well made for doves and are composed mostly of rootlets 
and small twigs. One nest rather more pretentious than usual was made of root- 
lets, grass stems and blades, leaf stems with veins attached, small twigs, horse hair 
and a few feathers. It was compact and fairly well made, with a decided cup in 
the center measuring nearly an inch deep, and two inches across from rim to rim. 
One, was an old nest re- vamped, and another was merely a superstructure over an 
old Abert Towhee’s nest. The very late date before mentioned was probably the 
second brood, as the nest was an old one re-lined, possibly a last year’s nest, but 
more likely an earlier nest of the same year. 
These doves are rather wild when on the nest and will not allow any familiar- 
ity. They rarely show any tendency to use the broken-wing tactics, though one did 
and made a most realistic performance of it. She fell from the nest when I was 
about eight feet distant and lay with quivering and beating wings. As I stepped 
closer she made ineffectual attempts to and fluttered along the ground at my 
feet just out of reach. She kept this up for about fifty yards before taking to 
flight. I then went on about my business after ascertaining that the nest contained 
two newly hatched young. Coming back an hour later, I scared her off the nest 
again and she repeated the performance but in a rather half-hearted way as though 
she did it from a sense of duty and rather doubted the efficacy of it. 
The vivacious little Inca Dove, Scardafella inca, is the cream of the dove 
family and is in the public eye or ear most of the time. Whether sitting on a 
barbed wire fence or a clothes line, with long tail hanging down perfectly plumb, 
or marching around in a combative manner with tail erect at right angles to the 
body, or rushing around busily and hurriedly, not to say greedily, feeding with the 
chickens in the back yard, it shows a decided individuality and arouses interest 
and affection. If I could transport to my California home the Bendire Thrashers 
to sing to me and the Inca Doves to amuse me I would surely do it. 
I have never seen them far from dwellings or barns, and even in nesting they 
show a decided preference for human company. They feed in yards with poultry, 
perch on back-yard fences, and seem as much part of the establishment as the 
wood-pile. They are rather dainty in their drinking, rarely using the chicken’s 
drinking vessel, but perching on the hydrant and catching the drops of water as 
they leak from the pipe. To do this they nearly have to stand on their heads but 
that does not bother them at all. They eat wheat and other small grains but draw 
the line at corn, it probably being too large for them to swallow. At our house we 
always include rations for the Incas when ordering wheat for the poultry. 
These little doves are with us the year through and their hard metallic little 
coo can be heard every month in the year, though most in evidence during the 
breeding season. As I write this I can hear the “coo-coo” which gives them their 
Pima name of Coo-coo. The call is much in evidence also during the heat' of July 
and August, at which trying time people with nerves complain of the constant 
noise they make, which begins early in the morning and ends late in the evening. 
There is an insistent, persevering quality about the calling that is quite impressive, 
and when a lot of them keep at it some people sit up and take notice. They are 
