beside the
Green River, and hear each other though they speak in whispers.

Would you like to seek the dove in Michigan in May? For there it was,
and then it was, that these wild pigeons nested, so we are told by
people who saw them, by hundreds of thousands, or even millions. They
built in trees of every sort, and sometimes as many as one hundred nests
were made in a single tree. Almost every tree on one hundred thousand
acres would have at least one nest. The lowest ones were so near the
ground that a man could reach them with his hand.

[Illustration: _Suppose you should find just one pair._]

Suppose you should find, next May, just one pair nesting. Sire Dove, we
think from what we have read, would help bring some twigs, and Dame Dove
would lay them together in a criss-cross way, so that they would make a
floor of sticks, sagging just a little in the middle. As soon as the
floor of twigs was firm enough, so that an egg would not drop through,
Dame Dove would put one in the shallow sagging place in the middle. It
would be a white egg, very much like those our tame pigeons lay; and,
because there would be no thick soft warm rug of dried grass on the
floor, you could probably see it right through the nest, if you should
stand underneath and look up. But you couldn't see it long, because,
almost as soon as it was laid, Dame Dove would tuck the feather
comforter she carried on her breast so cosily about that precious egg,
that it would need no other padding to keep it warm. She would stay
there, the faithful mother, from about two o'clock each afternoon until
nine or ten o'clock the next morning. She would not leave for one
minute, to eat or get a drink of water. Then, about nine or ten o'clock
each morning, Sire Dove would slip onto the nest just as she moved off,
and they would make the change so quickly that the egg could not even
get cool. That one very dear egg would need two birds to take care of
it, one always snuggling it close while the other ate and flew about and
drank.

So they would sit, turn and turn about, for fourteen days. All this
while they would be very gentle with each other, saying softly,
"Coo-coo," something as tame pigeons do, only in shorter notes, or
calling, "Kee-kee-kee." And sometimes Sire Dove would put his beak to
that of his nesting mate and feed her, very likely, as later they would
feed their young. For when the two weeks' brooding should be over, there
would be a funny, homely, spr