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<h2>THE PASSENGER PIGEON.</h2>
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<p>F 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.”</p>
<p>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 it
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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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