Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once probably the most common bird in the world. It is estimated that there were as many as five billion passenger pigeons in the United States. They lived in enormous flocks—the largest of them a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds. It was hunted into extinction by humans.

Life and extinction

The Passenger Pigeon was a very social bird. It lived in colonies with up to a hundred nests in a single tree, and stretching over hundreds of square miles. During summer, Passenger Pigeons lived throughout the part of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. In the winter, they lived in the southern U.S.

It was hunted for food, hog feed, as live targets for trap shooting and even sometimes as agricultural fertilizer, and shipped by the boxcar-load to the Eastern cities. In New York City in 1805, a brace (pair) of pigeons sold for two cents. Slaves and servants in 18th and 19th century America often saw no other meat. Commercial hunters harvested them in huge amounts for food, and most restaurants in the Eastern United States served pigeon to customers.

In the mid-1800s, it was noticeable that their numbers were dropping. The passenger pigeon only laid one egg at a time, so once numbers started to decline it would have taken time for them to start rising again. Almost all of the remaining quarter-million Passenger Pigeons were killed in a single day in 1896 by sport hunters, who knew they were shooting the last wild flock. The last wild Passenger Pigeon was shot by a 14-year-old boy in Ohio in March of 1900.

Other significant reasons for its extinction were deforestation (the birds relied on acorn and beech mast for breeding and shifted or occupied their breeding colonies in accordance with the food trees' mast year cycle), and probably social factors—the birds seemed to have initiated courtship and reproduction when they were gathered in large numbers; it was noted that small groups of Passenger Pigeons were notoriously difficult to get to breed successfully.

Martha

The last Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. She was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution and was skinned and mounted. She may be seen there to this day.

Popular Culture

The musician John Herald wrote a song about Martha: "Martha (Last of the Passenger Pigeons)". Also, the indie rock band Paint by Numbers wrote a song titled "Sweet Sweet Martha" to commemorate her death.

The April 27, 1948 episode of the Fibber McGee and Molly radio program is titled "The Passenger Pigeon Trap", in which McGee claims to have seen a Passenger Pigeon (he insists that the bird is "stinct") and plans to trap it in order to sell it to the highest bidder. It turns out to be nothing more than a Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) sitting on top of a bus, which in McGee's mind makes the pigeon a passenger.

Stephen King makes a number of references to the Passenger Pigeon in the 2005 Novel "Cell". He uses the Passenger pigeon as a allegory to the new human hive mind that developes after the pulse hits the United States.

Across North America, place-names refer to the former abundance of the Passenger Pigeon. Examples include:

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
Pigeon River(s) in: Minnesota-Ontario, North Carolina/Tennessee, Michigan (four), and Wisconsin
Pigeon Lake(s): Minnesota, Wisconsin
Pigeon Roost, Indiana
Crockford Pigeon Mountain, Georgia

Coextinction

The most often cited example of coextinction is that of the Passenger Pigeon and its parasitic lice Columbicola extinctus and Campanulotes defectus. Recently, C. extinctus was rediscovered on the Band-tailed Pigeon, and C. defectus was found to be a likely case of misidentification of the existing Campanulotes flavus. However, even though the story of Passenger Pigeon lice has a happy ending (rediscovery), it is uncertain whether coextinctions of other parasites, even on the Passenger Pigeon, have occurred.

References

Database entry includes justification for why this species is listed as extinct
Weidensaul, Scott (1994). Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing. ISBN 1555911439.

External links

Columbinae | Extinct birds