New Hampshire Statesman And State Journal

WILD PIGEONS.

The most remarkable characteristics of these birds is their associating together, both in their migrations and also during the period of incubation, in such prodigious numbers as almost to surpass belief, and which has no parallel among any other of the feathered tribes on the face of the earth, with which naturalists are acquainted.

These migrations appear to be undertaken rather in quest of food, than merely to avoid the cold climate; since we find them lingering in the northern regions around Hudson's Bay, as late as December; and since their appearance is so casual and irregular, sometimes not visiting certain districts for several years in any considerable numbers, while at other times they are innumerable. I have witnessed these migrations in the Genesee country—often in Pennsylvania, and also various parts of Virginia, with amazement; but all that I had then seen of them were mere straggling parties, when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld in our western forests, in the State of Ohio, Kentucky, and the Indiana territory.

These fertile and extensive regions abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the chief food of the wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant corresponding multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens that, having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, they discover another at the distance of sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening, to their place of general rendezvous, or as it is usually called, the roosting place. The roosting places are always in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented one of those places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising. The tender grass and underwood are destroyed, the surface is strewed with large limbs of trees broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another; and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an axe. The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot; and numerous places could be pointed out where for several years after, scarce a single vegetable made its appearance.

When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable distance visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours, they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them. By the Indians a pigeon roost or breeding place is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for that season; and all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion.

The breeding place differs from the former in its greater extent. In the western countries above mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and often extend in nearly a straight line across the country for a great way. Not far from Shelbyville, in the State of Kentucky, about five years ago, there was one of these breeding places, which stretched through the woods in nearly a north and south direction; was several miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards of forty miles in extent. In this tract almost every tree was furnished with nests, wherever the branches would accommodate them. The pigeons made their appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether, with their young, before the 25th of May.

As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests, numerous parties of the inhabitants from all parts of the adjacent country, came with waggons, axes, beds, and cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for several days at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me, that the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and squab pigeons, which had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure—while from twenty feet upwards to the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder; mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the axe-men were at work cutting down those trees that seemed to be most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner that in their descent they might bring down several others: by which the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single trees upwards of one hundred nests were found, each containing one young one only, a circumstance in the history of this bird not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk under the flying and fluttering millions from the frequent fall of large branches broken down by the weight of the multitudes above, and which in their descent often destroyed numbers of the birds themselves.

I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with my gun, and on my way to Frankfort, when about one o'clock the pigeons, which I had observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to return in such immense numbers, as I never before had witnessed. Coming to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a more uninterrupted view, I was astonished at their appearance.

They were flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond gun-shot, in several strata deep, and so close together that could shot have reached them, one discharge could not have failed of bringing down several individuals. From right to left, as far as the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming every where equally crowded. Curious to determine how long this appearance would continue, I took out my watch to note the time, and sat down to observe them. It was half past one. I sat for more than an hour, but instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed rather to increase both in numbers & rapidity; and anxious to reach Frankfort before night, I arose and went on. About four o'clock in the afternoon I crossed the Kentucky river, at the town of Frankfort, at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous and extensive as ever.

Silliman's Journal.