THROUGHOUT the State of Illinois and adjacent states this bird of sad refrain is a permanent resident, though less numerous and of uncertain occurrence in winter. In the spring of 1883, all the specimens seen at Wheatland, Indiana, had the ends of the toes frozen off, showing that they had braved the almost unprecedented cold of the preceding winter. They have been known to winter as far north as Canada, and in December considerable numbers have been seen about Windsor, Ontario.

The female is a little smaller than the male, and the young are duller and more brownish in color. In many places the Mourning Dove becomes half domesticated, nesting in the trees in the yard, showing but little fear when approached. While the Turtle Dove keeps the deepest woodland solitudes, and rarely seeks the fields and open places, this Dove is as often seen out of the woods as in them, for the greater part of the year at least; and, though a wary bird, it is not what we can call a shy one.

The love note of the Mourning Dove, though somewhat monotonous, "sounds particularly soothing and pleasant as we wander through the otherwise almost silent woods, just as they axe about to don their leafy vestures, under the gentle influence of an April sun." If the birds be abundant, their low and plaintive note, Coo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo, fills the entire forest with its murmur. Gentle, indeed, as the Dove is thought to be, still this does not hold good in the mating season, for two male birds will often fight with fury for the possession of a female. These encounters, however, are only between young or single birds.

If unmolested, these birds will nest in one certain locality for years. Mrs. Wright says the female is a most prettily shiftless house-wife. "Even though her mate should decline to furnish her with more liberal supply of sticks, she could arrange those she has to better advantage; but she evidently lacks that indispensable something, called faculty, which must be inborn. The eggs or bodies of the young show plainly through the rude platform and bid fair to either fall through it or roll out, but they seldom do. Meanwhile she coos regretfully, but does not see her way to bettering things, saying 'I know I'm a poor house-keeper, but it runs in our family; but when the Dove chooses a flattened out Robin's nest for a platform, the nestlings fare very well."

The Dove's food is confined mainly to vegetable matter, peas, beans, lintels, grains, and small seeds of various kinds. They frequent newly sown land and feed upon the seed grain; they search under the oak trees for acorns, and under beech trees for mast, sometimes feeding in the branches; in autumn the stubble field is a favorite feeding spot, where they pick up the scattered grain, and eat the tender heart shoots of the clover, and, Dixon says, they feed upon the growing turnip plants, and in keen weather when the snow lies deep they will make a meal on the turnips themselves. In their favor, however, is the fact that in the crops of these Doves are often found the seeds of noxious weeds, as the charlock and dock.