Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/174

 Rh flock of wild pigeons flying over the bay from Fisherman's Point to Stony Beach, and I assure you it reminded me of old times, from 1855 to 1880, when pigeons were plentiful every day. So I dropped my work and stood watching them. This flock was followed by six more flocks, each containing about thirty-five to eighty pigeons, except the last, which only contained seven. All these flocks passed over within half an hour. One flock of some fifty birds flew within gunshot of me, the others all the way from one hundred to three hundred yards from where I stood." Mr. Fugleberg is an old hunter and has had much experience with the wild pigeon. In a later letter dated September 4, 1897, he writes: "On Sept. 2, 1897, I was hunting prairie chickens near Lake Butte des Morts, Wis., where I met a friend who told me that a few days previous he had seen a flock of some twenty-five wild pigeons and that they were the first he had seen for years." This would appear as though these birds were instinctively working back to their old haunts, as the Winnebago region was once a favorite locality. We hope that Wisconsin will follow Michigan in making a close season on wild pigeons for ten years, and thus give them a chance to multiply, and, perhaps, regain, in a measure, their former abundance.

In Forest and Stream of Sept. 25, 1897, appeared a short notice of "Wild Pigeons in Nebraska," by "W. F. R." Through the kindness of the editor he placed me in