The Mourning Dove on Cape Cod

The emphasis currently being placed by Fish and Wildlife Service personnel on investigations of the Eastern Mourning Dove, Zenaidura macroura carolinensis (Linn(•), because of its importance as a game bird, and the concentration of their efforts in the southern states where the species is hunted, suggest the desirability of analyzing the data we have obtained from 21 years of banding this species on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where it is protected the year round.It is 16 years since Low (1935) published his study of our first four years of dove banding at North Eastham.Since then the number of birds handled, and returns and recoveries therefrom, has increased rivedold.Study of this more adequate sample verifies t•he conclusions reached tentatively by Low, and suggests additional trends not apparent from his smaller totals.SOURCES OF DATA All the doves banded at North Eastham have been obtained through routine trapping operations when time and personnel have permitted general sampling of the upland bird population.Most of our doves are captured in 15 large house-traps located semi-permanently in fixed positions on the research station grounds.Birds enter these traps at ground level through funnel entrances on all four sides.For bait we use a standard chicken scratch feed for bulk, and add to it smaller quantities of millet, canary, buckwheat, and sunflower seed to increase its attractiveness.No attempt has been made to be specifically selective in this trapping, and no special effort has ever been made to concentrat.e on doves.Whenever the trap line is operated, all individuals of all species that the bait attracts into the traps are duly banded, recorded, and released.Doves are present in the trapping area continuously in spring, summer.and autumn, and intermittently in winter.When present they frequently make up less than five percent and rarely more than ten percent of the individual birds handled daily.•Contribution number 46 front the Austin Ornitholc•gical Research Station, North Eastham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.ehis paper was prepared at the Biological Laboratories of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.Grateful acknowledgment is made to ,Mr, James L. Peters for his encouragement and constructive criticisms, to Dr. Erwin Raisz for helpful suggestions in graphing the data, and to Dr. Charles H. ,Blake of M.I.T. for assistance in the statistical methods employed.