Flights of locusts are often seen passing through the air, like vast clouds, obscuring the sky. The passenger-pigeon of America appears in almost equal numbers. The accounts of their vast nights would be incredible, were they not thoroughly well authenticated.
They are beautiful birds; the males being about sixteen inches in length, the females slightly smaller, and usually of less attractive plumage. The head, part of the neck, and chin of the male bird, are of a slaty-blue colour; the lower portions being also of a slate colour, banded with gold, green, and purplish-crimson, changing as the bird moves here and there. Reddish-hazel feathers cover the throat and breast, while the upper tail-coverts and back are of a dark slaty-blue. Their other feathers are black, edged with white; and the lower part of the breast and abdomen are purplish-red and white. The beak is black, and the eyes of a fiery orange hue, with a naked space round them of purplish-red.
Its chief food is the beech-mast; but it also lives on acorns, and grain of all sorts—especially rice. It is calculated that each bird eats half a pint of food in the day; and when we recollect their numbers, we may conceive what an immense amount must be consumed.
The female hatches only one bird at a time, in a nest slightly made of a few twigs, loosely woven into a sort of platform. Upwards of one hundred nests have been found in one tree, with a single egg in each of them; but there are probably two or three broods in the season. In a short time the young become very plump, and so fat, that they are occasionally melted down for the sake of their fat alone. They choose particular places for roosting—generally amid a grove of the oldest and largest trees in the neighbourhood.
Wilson, Audubon, and other naturalists, give us vivid descriptions of the enormous flights of these birds. Let us watch with Audubon in the neighbourhood of one of their curious roosting-places. We now catch sight of a flight of the birds moving with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height out of gunshot, in several strata deep, and close together. From right to left, far as the eye can reach, the breadth of this vast
procession extends, teeming everywhere, equally crowded. An hour passes, and they rather increase in numbers and rapidity of flight. The leaders of this vast body sometimes vary their course, now forming a large band of more than a mile in diameter; those behind tracing the exact route of their
predecessors. Now they once more change their direction—the column becoming an immense front, sweeping the heavens in one vast and infinitely extended line. Suddenly a hawk makes a sweep on a particular part of the column, when almost as quick as lightning that part shoots downwards out of the common track; but soon again rising, advances at the same rate as before.
We will now hurry on towards their breeding place, a forest on the banks of the Green River in Kentucky, fully forty miles in length, and more than three in width. In the neighbourhood are assembled a large number of persons, with horses, waggons, guns, and ammunition; and a farmer has brought three hundred hogs to be fattened on the refuse pigeons. As the vast flight arrives at the spot, thousands are knocked down by men with long poles. Some place pots of sulphur under the trees; others are provided with torches of pine-knots; and the rest have guns. The birds continue to pour in. The fires are lighted; and a magnificent, as well as almost terrifying, sight presents itself. The pigeons arrive by thousands, alighting everywhere, one above another, till solid masses, as large as hogsheads, are formed on the branches all around. Here and there the perches give way with a crash, and falling to the ground, destroy hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick is loaded. The pigeons continue coming, and it is past midnight before there is any sign of a decrease in their numbers. The ground in all directions is strewed with branches broken by the weight of the birds which have pitched on them. By sunrise, the enormous multitude have taken their departure, while wolves, foxes, and other animals who had assembled to feast on the bodies of the slain, are seen sneaking off.