Sportsmen are now having an exciting time in Buckingham county, Va. A correspondent, writing under date of the 16th ult., describes the great "pigeon roost" on the old furnace lands near Canton. He says:
"The area of the roost is four square miles, and to one who never saw a sight of the kind it is truly amazing. From one hour of sun until night the air is darkened with countless thousands of the birds flying from all directions (south of the river) inward to the roost. There is a grandeur indescribable in the mournful sounds of rushing wings as the trackless armies, marshaled in the "viewless wind," come sweeping to their bivouac. But the evening sight is not to be compared to that of the morning when the pigeons are leaving the roost. Rising upwards from the bushes like columns of blue smoke, the rays of the morning sun paint them with rainbow tints, and a canopy overshadows the woods like the sulphurous clouds above the battlefield. Wheeling in great divisions in the air, they divide, each army to its leader, and the heavens grow lighter as they disappear to refill their craws with acorns."
February 24, 1872. [Great Virginia pigeon roost.] Charleston Daily News 11(1912): 2. Also: February 28, 1872 in Daily Phoenix issued at Columbia, S.C.; March 7, 1872 in Waynesboro Village Record 24(40): 2.