Identifier: birdlore151913nati ( find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 ( 1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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nger Pigeon in Captivity By WALLACE CRAIG THE Passenger Pigeon was easily kept in captivity. All species of Pigeontake more or less well to cage-life, but the Passenger Pigeon throveand bred much more readily than some of the others. My own obser-vations of it at close range were due to the privilege of studying in the pigeonrymaintained by the late Prof. C. O. Whitman. In Chicago and in Woods Hole,Professor Whitman kept Passenger Pigeons in pens of modest dimensions,yet they bred, and would probably have maintained their numbers perma-nently, had it not been for in-breeding, the flock being all descended fromone pair. They took readily to the nest-boxes, nesting materials, and all otherartificial arrangements of the aviary. They did not become exceedingly tame,did not eat out of ones hand (so far as I saw); but, if effort had been made totame them to this degree, who knows but it might have been successful?It is a great pity that attempts were not made earlier to breed these birds in
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PASSENGER PIGEON, ADULT MALE(94) Recollections of the Passenger Pigeon in Captivity 9$ confinement, for it is certain that the species could have been thus savedfrom extinction. As an aviary bird, it would have been a favorite, on account of its beautyand its marked individuality. Constant close association with a bird in theaviary gives one a kind of intimate acquaintance with it which can seldom,if ever, be gained by observation of wild birds. And for such study at closerange the Passenger Pigeon was, and would ever have continued to be, a mostinteresting subject, for its strongly marked character appeared in every minutedetail of its habits, postures, gestures, and voice. In another place* I have given a somewhat technical and detailed de-scription of certain habits observed in the captive Ectopistes migratorius.The great account of this species, that by Professor Whitman, remains stillto be published in the monograph on Pigeons now being edited by DoctorRiddle. Here, in Bird-Lore,

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