. The passenger pigeon in Pennsylvania, its remarkable history, habits and extinction, with interesting side lights on the folk and forest lore of the Alleghenian region of the old Keystone state. bundance or scarcityof the favorite food of each variety of these prolificbirds. Passenger Pigeons seem to have been adapt-able to all the conditions of their habitat and varyingenvironments; laying two eggs when plenty of beech-mast was available, within a flight of fifty or sixtymiles of their nests, for two weeks of feeding theyoung birds; and, generally, one tgg when longerflights for the food wo
. The passenger pigeon in Pennsylvania, its remarkable history, habits and extinction, with interesting side lights on the folk and forest lore of the Alleghenian region of the old Keystone state. bundance or scarcityof the favorite food of each variety of these prolificbirds. Passenger Pigeons seem to have been adapt-able to all the conditions of their habitat and varyingenvironments; laying two eggs when plenty of beech-mast was available, within a flight of fifty or sixtymiles of their nests, for two weeks of feeding theyoung birds; and, generally, one tgg when longerflights for the food would become necessary for a con-siderable part of the time. They would find the foodrequired for three or four nestings each spring, as arule, between northern Georgia, Alabama and Miss-issippi, at the south, and the northern limits of thebeech tree, near James P)ay, at the west; thence eastalong the Laurentian highlands to near the mouth ofthe St. Lawrence river and Chaleurs Bay, in Quebec;thence southward through New Brunswick, Maine,New Hampshire and Vermont, into northern NewYork. In these broad forests, we may be certain, were tobe found hundreds of millions of bushels of beechnuts, 50. W. WALLACE BREWER THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 51 every spring, as they unfolded their two fat leaves, up-on slender stems that were anchored in the rich leaf-mold soil of such a forest, in primeval conditions. Wemay fairly assume that from four to six young birdsreached maturity from each pair of the parent birds,to return to the southland, each autumn, ahead of thesnow and frozen ground of winter that made their foodimpossible to find. Before the nuts fell to the ground,through action of frost and wind, the birds would beatall the nuts from a tree, with their wings, in a fewminutes, while all was a scramble, both above and be-low, for the same, making the forest roar with thesound of their thunder. Their increase, no doubt, wasapproximately in ratio of food available, each year, in
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectpigeons, bookyear1919
