Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/247

 212 latticed bottom. In fact, it has been my custom to always thus examine the nests before climbing the tree.

The platform structures vary in diameter from six to twelve inches or more, differing in size according to the length of the sticks, but generally are about nine or ten inches across. An acquaintance of mine had tamed some wild birds, which at last bred regularly in captivity. These birds were well supplied with an abundance of material for their nests and always selected in confinement such as described above, and making a nest about nine inches in diameter.

The breeding places are generally found in oak woods, but the great nesting sites in Michigan were often in timbered lands, I am informed.

The height of the nest varies. It may be as low as six feet or all of sixty-five feet from the ground.

Passenger Pigeons are always gregarious when unmolested, and hundreds of thousands sometimes breed in a neighborhood at one time. It is impossible to say how many nests were the most found in one tree, but there are authenticated instances of a hundred. One man, on whose veracity I rely, informs me that he counted 110 nests in one tree in Emmett County, the lower peninsula. Still this may not be correct, for we all know how easy it is to be deceived in correctly counting and keeping record of even the branches of a tree, and when these limbs are occupied by nests it is