The Passenger Pigeon
The Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once the most common bird in North America. They lived in enormous flocks, and during migration, it was possible to see a flock of them a mile wide and 300 miles long, taking several days to pass and containing up to a billion birds. Their numbers began to fall from loss of habitat during the period of European settlement, but the real decline began when pigeon meat was commercialized as a cheap food for slaves and poor people in the 19th century, resulting in hunting on a massive scale.
The Passenger pigeon practiced communal roosting and breeding and needed large numbers for optimum breeding conditions. One large nesting site in Wisconsin covered 850 square miles and the number of birds nesting there was estimated to be around 136,000,000. Their technique for survival was based on mass tactics - there was safety in such large flocks. When a flock established itself in an area, the number of local animal predators was so small compared to the total number of birds that little damage would be inflicted on the flock as a whole. This colonial way of life became very dangerous when man became a predator on the flocks. When the Passenger pigeons were massed together, it was easy for man to slaughter them in such great numbers that there were not enough birds left to successfully reproduce the species. As the flocks dwindled in size with resulting breakdown of social facilitation, it was doomed to disappear.
On September 1, 1914, the last known Passenger pigeon, Martha (see above), died at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was sent to the Smithsonian Institution where she is in the archived collection, currently not on display.
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John James Audubon's account of a flock of migrating Passenger pigeons.
Birds of America (1937).
Plate 62 - Passenger pigeons.
"In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens a few miles beyond Hardensburgh, I observed the Pigeons flying from north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I travelled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose...
"Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which there flew lower as they passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or more, the population fed on no other flesh than that of Pigeons, and talked of nothing but Pigeons."
Frank M. Chapman. Color Key to North American Birds. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903.
Page 125 - Pigeons: the Passenger pigeon is the topmost bird of the line of four in Chpaman's grouping.
This book describes the Passenger pigeon as exceedingly rare.
William Leon Dawson. The Birds of Ohio. Columbus: Wheaton Publishing Co., 1903.
Plate 49 - Passenger pigeon.
This book reports that the last wild Passenger pigeon seen in Ohio was on March 24, 1900, when a boy shot one near Sargents, close to the boundary line of Pike and Scioto Counties.
Jacob H. Studer. The Birds of North America. New York: Published under the auspices of the Natural Science Association of America, 1895. Illustrated by Theodore Jasper.
Plate 29 - Passenger pigeons.
Studer described the Passenger pigeon by quoting other published observations, including Audubon's famous account from 1813.
F. J. Wenninger. "The Passenger Pigeon," from The American Midland Naturalist. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1909-.
Vol. 1, no. 8 (June 1910).
No illustration.
In an effort to prevent the extinction of the Passenger pigeon, the American Ornithological Union offered a prize of $1,000 for "the first information of a nesting pair of wild passenger pigeons undisturbed." No one ever claimed the money.
Chas. Dury. "The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius, Linn.): A Reminiscence," from The Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History. Cincinnati: The Society, 1878-1945. Vol. 21, no. 2 (September 1910)
No illustration.
The author wrote, "One foggy day in October, 1884, at 5 a.m., I looked out of my bedroom window [in Cincinnati], and as I looked six wild pigeons flew down and perched on the dead branches of a tall poplar tree that stood about one hundred feet away. As I gazed at them in delight, feeling as though old friends had come back, they quickly darted away and disappeared in the fog, the last I ever saw of any of these birds in this vicinity." Dury also mentioned that the Cincinnati Zoological Garden had about 22 passenger pigeons when it opened in 1875, but by 1910 only two were left. He said, "The unspeakable cruelty of the method by which these birds were so ruthlessly butchered, is a blot on the fair page of ornithological history in this country."