File:Birds and nature in natural colors - being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada (1913) (14568811857).jpg

Identifier: birdsnatureinnat02chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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ought to be the lastof its race. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given for the disappearanceof the passenger pigeon. Today it is well-nigh as rare as the great auk, and thereported occurrence of one of the birds in any part of the country is a matter ofscientific interest. The pigeon that I met on that April morning in the year 1894, in LincolnPark, was perched on the limb of a soft maple and was facing the rising sun.It was a male bird in perfect plumage. There were no trees between him andthe lake to break the suns rays from his breast. Every feather shone, and thebirds neck was gem-like in its brilliancy. Tennyson needed no special poeticlicense to write of the Burnished dove. I watched the pigeon through a glassfor fully ten minutes. A park loiterer approached and said he wished that hehad a gun; that it was the first wild pigeon he had seen in thirty years. Thatman had no soul above pigeon pie. A city park is not the safest resting-place for a creature upon whom may ^22
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PURPLE GALLINULE depend the saving of a race from extinction. I flushed the pigeon, hoping that itwould direct its flight northward, and not rest until it had passed beyond thelimits of boys with slingshots and stones. It left its perch, but to my dismayit shaped its course straight toward the heart of the smoky city. Good wishesfollowed its arrowy flight, but the birds life history is closed, as the last one dieda few months ago. The Purple Gallinule (lonomis martinicus) By Gerard Alan Abbot Length: 13 inches. Range: South Atlantic and Gulf states, casually northward to New York,Maine and Wisconsin. This brilliant bird is common to the Southern states. It is generally asso-ciated with the Florida gallinule, but is marked by more brilliant plumage. It has little of the aspect of a gallinule, but stands higher, and has its legsmore forward. As it walks, the neck is alternately bridled up or thrown forward,and its short black and white tail is changed from a semi-erect to a perpendicula

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