The banding records which are the basis for this study 
were contributed by hundreds of independent, State, and Federal 
banders. Many of these individuals are continuing actively in 
mourning dove banding and are the backbone of any management 
program which is based on conclusions drawn from the analysis 
of banding data, 
For background information and concepts of mourning 
dove management units presented in unpublished Mourning Dove 
Newsletters, I am indebted to W. F. Crissey, J. W. Aldrich, 
and H. S. Peters. For helpful suggestions in preparation of the 
manuscript, I extend my appreciation to E. L. Atwood, Lucille 
F. Stickel, J. W. Aldrich, and C. F. Kaczynski. I wish to thank 
A. J. Duvall and A. D. Geis for advice in tabulating banding re- 
cords and for constructive criticism on procedures for weighting 
banding data. 
PROCEDURE 
Bandings and Recoveries 
To reach the objective of relating production areas to 
harvest areas, it is necessary to use only banded birds that can 
be definitely associated with a breeding area. Although approxi- 
mately 70,000 nestlings were banded during the 1953-57 period, 
the recovery rate was low, and the total number of first-season 
recoveries available for analysis is still inadequate in many 
respects. To increase the number of recoveries with which to 
work, other bandings were examined to determine the degree 
to which their recovery patterns were similar to the first-year 
or direct recoveries of nestlings. Statistical tests showed no 
significant difference between the migration patterns based on 
direct and indirect recoveries of nestlings banded any time of 
year and those based on recoveries of adults, immatures, and 
unknown-age doves banded during the months of May through 
August. Hence, the data from these bandings were combined 
for use in this preliminary report, which is based on 3, 543 
recoveries from 113,978 banded mourning doves (tables 1 and 2). 
1/ Tables are at the end of the report. 
