There is evidence that the passenger pigeon population had been stable for 20,000 years. ![]() With a population in the billions and several different nesting grounds it seems likely that the harvesting of billions of birds over such a relatively short period of time was the main cause of the extinction. There are many different factors that can impact the population of any animal: disease, infestation, predation, invasive species, and environmental catastrophe, to name a few. There is and always will be a debate about whether humans were the major cause of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. A Cuban Commemorative Stamp of the Passenger Pigeon Rewards were offered for pigeons that might still be living in the wild, but none were ever found. The passenger pigeon was on its way to extinction. Taking the birds from their young and their eggs, meant that the population shrank even faster.īy the late 19th century the flocks had been decimated and averaged only a few dozens of birds. As the demand rose the birds were harvested directly from their nesting grounds, which did double the damage. Millions and millions of the birds were shipped, via trains, to restaurants in the big cities where they were served as squab. Men, women, and children cleaned the birds and packed them into the barrels. A whole industry developed.Ĭoopers made thousands of barrels. There were even contests to see who could kill the most. They would cover the ground a couple of feet deep. They were so dense and flew so low that you could even knock them out of the sky with a long pole. They were shot with large blunderbuss shotguns that could bring them down by the hundreds. People started harvesting them by the tens of millions. developed a large demand for the tasty little birds. With the invention of the telegraph and the introduction of the railroad, that all changed. But over that time the numbers eaten were very tiny relative to the massive flocks. Inhabitants of North America had eaten them for thousands of years. ![]() The passenger pigeons had one major problem: they were very tasty. I don’t know of anything in our modern age that could equal it. It’s hard for me to even imagine such an incredible sight. “As I listened more intently, I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder and yet the morning was clear, calm, and beautiful.” The mysterious sound came “nearer and nearer,” until Pokagon deduced its source: “While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season.” It seemed as if “an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me,” he later wrote. “In May 1850, a 20-year-old Potawatomi tribal leader named Simon Pokagon was camping at the headwaters of Michigan’s Manistee River during trapping season when a far-off gurgling sound startled him. That is the equivalent of 94,000 one-thousand-pound steers. The flock described above would have weighed nearly 47,000 tons. The female was between 15 in and 15.7 in and weighed a little less on average. The male passenger pigeon was between 15.4 in to 16 in and he weighed between 9 and 12 oz. A male passenger pigeon Panaiotidi/Shutterstock Imagine 85% of Luxembourg covered in pigeon nests – every tree bowing under the weight of dozens or even hundreds of nests. ![]() The European country of Luxembourg has an area of around 1,000 square miles. Their nesting grounds in Wisconsin covered around 850 square miles and the weight of nests would take down trees. ![]() “A small flock of passenger pigeons.” Imagine 14 hours of this! Some compared the sound to hundreds of trains passing at once. W itnesses said that the flock was so dense that it darkened the sky and made normal conversation impossible. One flock took 14 hours to pass and was estimated to have contained up to 150 million birds. Throughout the 19th century the passenger pigeon passed over North America in flocks as large as 1 mile wide and 300 miles long. Passenger pigeons were probably the most populous birds in the world in the mid-19th century. We are small, but we are mighty in our numbers, over 7.5 billion and counting. The story of the passenger pigeon is important because it shows us how relatively easy it is to lose even one of the most abundant animals on earth. Martha was around 27 years old and that’s very old for a bird. She died of natural causes at the Cincinnati Zoo on Sept 1, 1914. The last passenger pigeon was named Martha, in honor of Martha Washington.
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