| IF the reader is interested in
numbers, he will appreciate the statement written about
1808 by Wilson, who estimated that a flock of Wild
Pigeons observed by him near Frankfort, Kentucky,
contained at least 2,230,272,000 individuals. If he is
also interested in the aspect presented by these birds in
flight, cloud-like in form and apparently boundless in
extent, he will read the full and graphic descriptions
given by Audubon. In 1863, when the writer was a boy, he
remembers seeing the birds brought to town in barrels and
sold at a price which did not justify transportation to
market. What appeared to be a cloud, dark and lowering,
was not infrequently seen approaching, soon to shut out
the light of the sun, until the birds which composed it,
on the way to or from their feeding or roosting places,
had passed on. Now hear what Major Bendire, as late as
1892, says: "It looks now as if their total
extermination might be accomplished within the present
century. The only thing which retards their complete
extinction is that it no longer pays to net these birds,
they being too scarce for this now, at least in the more
settled portions of the country, and also, perhaps, that
from constant and unremitting persecution on their
breeding grounds, they have changed their habits
somewhat, the majority no longer breeding in colonies,
but scattering over the country and breeding in isolated
pairs." The natural home of the Wild Pigeon is within the wooded lands, and they are seldom met with upon the broad prairies. |
Audubon observed
that is was almost entirely influenced in its migrations
by the abundance of its food, that temperature had little
to do with it, as they not infrequently moved northward
in large columns as early as the 7th of March, with a
temperature twenty degrees below the freezing point. 'The Wild Pigeons are capable of propelling themselves in long continued flights and are known to move with an almost incredible rapidity, passing over a great extent of country in a very short time." Pigeons have been captured in the state of New York with their crops still filled with the undigested grains of rice that must have been taken in the distant fields of Georgia or South Carolina, apparently proving that they must have passed over the intervening space within a very few hours. Audubon estimated the rapidity of their flight as at least a mile a minute. The Wild Pigeon is remarkable for its ease and grace, whether on the ground or the limbs of trees. Though living, moving, and feeding together in large companies, they mate in pairs, several broods are reared in a season. Nesting beginning very early in the spring. The nests are placed on trees, being a slight platform structure of twigs, without any material for lining whatever. Two white eggs are laid. Mr. Goss says (1891) that the Passenger Pigeon is still to be found in numbers within the Indian Territory and portions of the southern states, and in Kansas a few breed occasionally in the Neosho Valley. |