Comparison of Calling Doves in Pennsylvania and New York 
During June 1950, &. J. Duvall and C. S. Robbins, Fish and Wildlife 
Service, made counts on two reutes in Erie County, Pennsylvmia, and 
four routes in northwestern New York. The writer repeated these routes 
during June of 1951. Table 13 compares the numbers of calling doves 
over the routes during the two years, and indicates a reduction in 
numberse However due to a different observer with different acuity of 
hearing in 1951, counts that year may not have included occasional very 
distant doves which would have been heard by the 1950 observers. Conse- 
quently it is believed the decrease may not have been as. much as indicated 
by the figures. 
Table 13.--Doves Heard on Routes in Northwestern Pennsylvania 
and Western New Yor 
Route No. Location 1951 1950 
8&9 Erie County, Pa. 20 23 
10 Niagara County, N. Y. 20 3 
11 Niagara County, N. Y. 20 Lo 
12 Genesee and Orleans County, Ne. Y. 2 11 
13 Wayne County, N. Y. dl 48 
Totals 121 165 
Conclusions 
Two summers of Mourning Dove call-road counts in Ohio provided 
opportunity to test and develop this method of indexing the breeding 
population. Because the 1950 work was conducted in June, July, and 
August and that of 1951 was in May and June, all of the results cannot 
be compared directly; yet the same general conclusions are indicated 
from the work of each year. Judging from tests of my data by Leonard 
Foote, counts made in June of both years may furnish a statistically 
reliable method of denoting changes in dove populations. | 
The standardized route of 20 stations in 20 miles will be further 
tested in 1952 with counts on the same Ohio routes for direct comparison 
with the 1951 results. 
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