"I came to the Red River Settlement in 1860 and found the pigeons
very plentiful on my arrival. The birds came in many thousands, and
great numbers of them bred in the northeastern portion of the province
through the district north of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake,
where the cranberry and blueberry are abundant. These fruits constitute
their chief food supply, as they remain on the bushes and retain much
of their food properties until well on into the summer following their
growth. They also feed largely on acorns wherever they abound. The
decline began about the early seventies, and 1877 was the first year
in which I encountered large flocks of them passing northwesterly from
White Sand River near Fort Pelly. This was on a dull, drizzling day
about the middle of May, and I presume they were then heading towards
the Barren Grounds district, where the blueberry and the cranberry are
very abundant."
Mr. E. H. G. G. Hay, formerly police magistrate of Portage la Prairie,
now of St. Andrews, reports:
"I came to the country in June, 1861, and found that the pigeons were
abundant previous to my arrival. To give you an idea of their numbers,
a Mr. Thompson of St. Andrews some mornings caught with a net about ten
feet square as many as eighty dozen, and in the spring of 1864 I fired
into a flock as they rose from the ground and picked up seventeen birds.
"The birds were mostly migratory in what is now known as Manitoba,
and most of them went farther north after the seeding season. I never
heard of any extensive rookeries such as those observed in the east
and south. The few that bred here frequented mixed poplar and spruce.
They seemed most numerous in the sixties and began to show signs of
decreasing about 1869 or 1870, and by 1875 they had all disappeared and
I have only seen an occasional bird since."
Mr. William Clark of the Hudson's Bay Company, Winnipeg, informs me:
"The first place I remember having seen pigeons in Manitoba was at
White Horse Plains (St. François Xavier) in 1865, where they were very
numerous, breeding in the oak trees in that district. Two years after
this I went to Oak Point on Lake Manitoba, but do not remember the
birds there then nor since."
Mr. Charles A. Boultbee of Macgregor, Man., replies as follows:
"I have resided in Manitoba since 1872, and have taken pigeons as far
north as Fort Pelly in the fall of 1874, but know nothing of them
previously. In our district they usually made their appearance in the
fall and fed upon the grain. They continued fairly numerous until about
1882, at which time we had to drive them from the grain stocks, but
they then disappeared and only stragglers have been noted since."
There is no doubt that many other reports could have been secured, but,
as all seem to tend toward the one conclusion, I shall save time and
space by summarizing the information at hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account