The Mexican Ground Dove 
especially in the coastal counties, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, San Mateo, 
and San Francisco. 
Authorities.—Coues (Chamaepelia passerina), Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 
1866, p. 93 (Ft. Yuma); Littlejohn, Bull. Cooper Orn. Club, vol. i., 1899, p. 73 (Pes- 
cadero); Stephens, Condor, vol. v., 1903, p. 77 (Ehrenberg, Colo. R.); Todd, Annals 
Carnegie Mus., vol. viii., 1913, p. 534 (monogr.); Fortiner, Condor, vol. xxii., 1920, 
p. 154 (Imperial Valley, breeding; habits); ibid., vol. xxiii., 1921, p. 168 (nesting through¬ 
out the year). 
WHEN a tiny portion of the landscape, hitherto unnoticed, detaches 
itself from the ground, and charges with a curious little waddling flight into 
the nearest thicket, we naturally surmise a new sparrow, and we are not a 
little amazed to find instead a duodecimo dove; and when the mind has 
reluctantly accepted this quarter-sized pocket-edition of a dove as a fact, 
expectation is further defeated by finding not a kittenish approximation 
of dove-like qualities, a cunning, cuddlesome miniature “too cute for 
anything,” but a prosaic dead-in-earnest grubber of the fields, a self- 
centered, self-sufficient little dwarf who asks only to be let alone, and who 
sternly repels all overtures, whether of admiration or condescension. 
For one 1 resent this elfin self-sufficiency. What business has an under¬ 
sized, grown-up squab to maintain such a moral aloofness, to treat us 
lords of creation as though we were non-existent, or else, when we force 
the issue of attention, to move off in disdain as though the neighborhood 
were polluted? In my barefoot days I have seen a bevy of little girls act 
thus. Perhaps it is the defense of all dwarfs. 
The disaffection began, I think, at the mesquite camp where I 
found a “Mex” Ground Dove’s nest five feet up in a bush and not a 
hundred feet away. I immediately planned portraiture—surely an in¬ 
tended compliment. But as often as any one of us approached within 
forty feet of that nest the “techy” occupant faced about and sped away. 
We might sing, we might shout, we might dance if we liked, we might 
break up lengths of firewood in explosive succession—that was our busi¬ 
ness; but look at her sacred person—never! Finally I contrived a tunnel 
through the foliage, that I might direct the impartial glass eye upon her 
and snap her unaware. The portrait of Her Huffiness which, highly 
magnified, adorns the next page, is the record of my loftiest success. 
And yet these birds are among the most familiar visitors about 
rancherias and clearings. They consume weed-seed and fallen grain 
wherever found and even mingle with the chickens at morning mess. 
Singly or in twos or by dozens they seem to show a special fondness for the 
humble quarters of the Mexican laborers, and it may be they only cherish 
a special resentfulness against the white race. 
Business-like always, the Ground Dove is not less diligent in court- 
