Blue and Bluish 
and tipped with ashy white. Wing coverts sparsely spotted 
with black. Flanks and underneath the wings bluish. 
Female — Duller and without iridescent reflections on neck. 
Range — North America, from Quebec to Panama, and westward 
to Arizona. Most common in temperate climate, east of 
Rocky Mountains. 
Migrations — March. November. Common summer resident ; 
not migratory south of Virginia. 
The beautiful, soft-colored plumage of this incessant and 
rather melancholy love-maker is not on public exhibition. To see 
it we must trace the a-coo-o, coo-o, coo-oo, coo-o to its source in 
the thick foliage in some tree in an out-of-the-way corner of the 
farm, or to an evergreen near the edge of the woods. The slow, 
plaintive notes, more like a dirge than a love-song, penetrate to 
a surprising distance. They may not always be the same lovers 
we hear from April to the end of summer, but surely the sound 
seems to indicate that they are. The dove is a shy bird, attached 
to its gentle and refined mate with a devotion that has passed 
into a proverb, but caring little or nothing for the society of other 
feathered friends, and very little for its own kind, unless after the 
nesting season has passed. In this respect it differs widely from 
its cousins, the wild pigeons, flocks of which, numbering many 
millions, are recorded by Wilson and other early writers before 
the days when netting these birds became so fatally profitable. 
What the dove finds to adore so ardently in the “shiftless 
housewife,” as Mrs. Wright calls his lady-love, must pass the 
comprehension of the phoebe, that constructs such an exquisite 
home, or of a bustling, energetic Jenny wren, that “looketh well 
to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idle- 
ness.” She is a flabby, spineless bundle of flesh and pretty 
feathers, gentle and refined in manners, but slack and incompe- 
tent in all she does. Her nest consists of a few loose sticks, 
without rim or lining; and when her two babies emerge from 
the white eggs, that somehow do not fall through or roll out of 
the rickety lattice, their tender little naked bodies must suffer 
from many bruises. We are almost inclined to blame the incon- 
siderate mother for allowing her offspring to enter the world 
unclothed— obviously not her fault, though she is capable of just 
such negligence. Fortunate are the baby doves when their lazy 
mother scatters her makeshift nest on top of one that a robin has 
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