Tales of Extinction: The Passenger Pigeon

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This is a story of how one of North America’s most abundant birds became extinct. 

I wanted to start with an excerpt from Aldo Leopold’s writing, On a Monument to a Pigeon, which goes:

“The Passenger Pigeon was no mere bird, he was a biological storm. He was the lightning that played between two biotic poles of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and his own zest for living. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a traveling blast of life. Like any other chain reaction, the pigeon could survive no diminution of his own furious intensity. Once the pigeoners had subtracted from his numbers, and once the settlers had chopped gaps in the continuity of his fuel, his flame guttered out with hardly a sputter or even a wisp of smoke.”

The extinction of the Passenger Pigeon is a terrifying example of human greed and ignorance. How a bird went from the most abundant bird species in North America to extinct, in the span of only about 100 years.

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopisres migratorius) was a large dove species in the family Columbidae. Its genus name, Ectopistes, translates to “wandering”, and its species name migratorius means passing by. Both of these parts of their name is a reference to how migratory and nomadic this species was.

And they could be seen traveling in massive flocks, which would travel in search of food, shelter and to and from their breeding grounds throughout the central and eastern parts of North America. And that is one thing that really stands out with their historical accounts, which also makes its extinction that much more shocking, was their population size. The Passenger Pigeon was at one point the most abundant bird in North America, possibly comprising up to 25 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States and with a population estimated to be around 3 to 5 billion individuals. To put that in perspective, that’s about 15 birds for every one person in the United States currently. 

This was a bird who you couldn’t really ignore and was often seen mentioned by early explorers and settlers. A famous depiction of this species was by Cotton Mather who wrote about a flock of Passenger Pigeons that was about a mile in width and took several hours to pass overhead. Whose flocks you could hear as they approached, their wing beats collectiving sounding like a thunderstorm was approaching, or described as a massive cloud that would blot out the sun. I am always impressed by the massive flocks of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbird that can be seen passing through New York in the Spring and fall, even those numbers would pale in comparison to the great flocks of the Passenger Pigeon. It would be something to see such an incredible migration! These were also very fast birds, being able to fly at about 62 mph!

While very similar looking to the Mourning Dove, DNA analysis actually has revealed it is more closely related to the genus Patagioenas, the same family as the Band-tailed Pigeon.

The male had a blueish-gray head, whose color went down the back of its neck and back. On the sides of their neck, were iridescent feathers which could appear as bronze, golden-green, or violet depending on the light and angle. Similar to how the gorget of a hummingbird can appear as different colors depending on how you are viewing them. 

There were also some black spots on their wings. Their wing and back were also a slate-gray that had a tinge of olive brown that transitioned into a grayish brown on their lower wing. Their tail feathers were mostly white except for the two central feathers, which were a brownish-gray. Their underside though, contrasting with their more subtle back, was a striking rich pinkish-orange color, this color then diluted to a pale pink, then white as it went down to its under tail coverts. Their thin bill was black and their legs were a beautiful bright coral-red. Their bright carmine-red eyes were circled by a narrow purplish-red eye-ring.

Females were similar in appearance to males but were a bit more duller colored and overall more brownish. Juveniles greatly resemble the adult females but without the iridescent feathers around their neck. The males also measured about 15.4 to 16.1 inches long while females were about 15 to 15.7 inches.

The Passenger Pigeon could be found throughout the deciduous forests of eastern North America but there had been records of them outside of their typical range. Even though they could be found in quite a large area, they primarily bred in the Great Lakes region.

Their diet consisted of mast, which included primarily beechnuts and acorns, but also included some fruits and invertebrates. This diet required large expanses of mature nut-bearing trees to sustain their large populations; once they ate all of this available food source in an area, they would move on.

These birds were also highly social and would have communal roosts and were communal breeders. Unlike many species of pigeons or doves who would nest individually and spread out, the Passenger Pigeon would nest together in large numbers, sometimes up to 100 in a single tree, with these nesting sites covering 100’s of acres each.

Their young also grew incredibly quick, being able to fly in about 14 days, half the time as most other pigeon species. This allowed them to raise their young and be able to move on before they consumed all the nearby food.

While it’s not surprising to hear that these birds were hunted by the native people of the region, the hunting of these birds greatly increased with the arrival of the Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. At this time, hunting of them increased on a massive scale as their meat was more commercialized as a cheap food. And apparently they were easy to hunt, not even a gun was required, apparently according to reports, with simply a stick, you could knock many out of the air.

I won’t get into all the fine details of the accounts of how the pigeon was exploited, for food and game, as honestly, it is pretty disturbing on the zeal and fervor that people killed en masse this species. 

With the construction of the railroad system and the invention of the telegraph, it became much easier to relay the location of these flocks and their nesting sites and for people to get to their location quickly. From there, pigeoners would descend on the flocks, blasting them out of the sky, throwing objects at them and trapping them with nests. The forests that they nested in would be cut down to get at the squabs, or baby pigeons, or sometimes simply set on fire to cause them to fall out of the trees.

These hunted pigeons would then get loaded into the railroad carts and shipped across the country by the millions, with it even documented that a town in Plattsburgh, New York shipped out 1.8 million pigeons in just 1851. Other reports state that a single hunter sent three million pigeons to other cities in his life. Hunting Passenger Pigeons became a career for possibly up to 1,200 people by 1881.

The Passenger Pigeon’s primary survival strategy involved their huge numbers, often labeled as “predator satiation”, with their unpredictable route and nesting locations, natural predators could only eat so much, this survival strategy can also be seen in many cicada species, who emerge in large numbers every so odd years. Predators can’t adjust to these inconsistent numbers and thus can’t really put a dent in the prey species numbers. While this strategy would generally work well for them in the past, when it comes to people, this made them incredibly vulnerable and made their locations easy to find.

Habitat loss was another huge hit for the species. While the suitable habitat began to slowly trickle down from about 1800 to 1870, it was during those later years that the loss of habitat really cranked up and habitat that these pigeons needed, the deciduous forests, really started to be cleared for farming at an alarming pace up into the 1890’s. The flocks of Passenger needed large expanses of nut-producing forests to sustain them. These forests that they needed were rabily cut to make room for farming efforts as people expanded across the continent.

In 1871, a massive communal nesting site was documented, covering 850 square miles in Wisconsin, which contained an estimated 136 million adults. Only a few years later in 1878, the last large nesting site was noted in Michigan, once discovered, it was estimated that about 50,000 birds were killed every day for almost five months straight. Soon after, because of hunting and habitat loss, these nesting sites populations began to plummet, and by the mid 1890’s, these sites only contained only a few dozen individuals. Just as quickly as these nesting sites dropped, the Passenger Pigeon just as quickly disappeared from the landscape.

All of this hunting and habitat loss ended in the last authenticated record of this species in Pike County, Ohio on March 24, 1900, who was then shot, later being stuffed and given the name “Buttons”, as it was given buttons for its eyes. Several organizational still hoped that there was still some Passenger Pigeons left in the wild, so a bounty was offered by the American Ornithologists Union from 1909 to 1912, offering $1,500 (estimated at about $49,000 today) to anyone who could provide proof of a nest or nesting colony. Unfortunately, the reward money was never able to be claimed.

While all wild pigeons were disappearing from the landscape, the remaining captive pigeons were split into three captive flocks. With these birds, there was still hope for the species, that those few birds in captivity could establish a breeding population of these pigeons. These groups were located in Milwaukee, Chicago and in Cincinnati.

The Milwaukee, Wisconsin group was kept by David Whittaker, who started his collection in 1888 and had up to 15 individuals. Another of these groups of pigeons was kept by Professor Charles Otis Whitman at the University of Chicago. A total of six birds were originally in this group, sent from David Whittaker in Wisconsin. Later on, he would eventually purchased the remainder of Whitakers collection by 1897, ending with a total of 19 individuals. Though in 1989 Whitman did end up giving Whitman back seven of those birds. By 1902, Whitman had 16 birds, with many eggs being laid. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, few hatched, and many of the hatchlings died. With no new birds being produced, the flocks’ numbers dropped. By 1907, only four males still lived, each of which died sometime between November of 1908 and February of 1909. 

The last flock of Passenger pigeons was cept at the Cincinnati Zoo, which consisted of more than 20 individuals. Both the zoo and Whitman worked together to find a strategy to successfully breed the Passenger Pigeon in captivity.  This attempt also consisted of trying to use Rock Pigeons to foster Passenger Pigeon eggs. Many species, who if they lose an egg early on will double clutch, or lay another egg to replace the lost one. This strategy has been used often with attempts to help rebound a diminished bird population, so instead of maybe getting only one chick a year from a pair, there is the chance at two, with the first egg being cared for by a foster bird or by human caregivers, and the parents raising the second. In 1902, Whitman gave the zoo a female passenger pigeon, which it is believed he hatched in 1885 and was named Martha.

Martha, named after Martha Washington, the first lady of the United States, would become the last of her species. While the history of this bird seemed to have gotten muddled over the years, with some records stating she hatched with Whitman’s flock, and others stating she hatched at the Cincinnati zoo. Overall though, this is the generally accepted history of this famous bird. 

By 1909, Martha and two other male Passenger Pigeons were the last known surviving birds. One male died shortly after that year, and Martha’s last remaining mate, now named George, died in July of 1910. As she aged, she became much more imobile in her enclosure, leading to some visitors even throwing sand at her to try and make her move, such horrific treatment for the last of a species, because of this, her enclosure was then roped off. Then, on September 1st, 1914, estimated at the age of 29, Martha was found dead on the floor of her enclosure, marking the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon.

For the Passenger Pigeon, environmental laws came too late and too weak. By the time laws were starting to try to be put in place, their population was holding on by a thread. At the time, the idea that a species could go extinct was not really a concept people were familiar with, their population seemed to never decrease, until all the hunting and habitat destruction finally caught up to it, and the species faded rapidly from the environment.

With the last sighting of a last wild Passenger Pigeon in 1900, and the passing of Martha in 1914, the passenger pigeon passed into extinction. It is truly sad how a once plentiful species went from flocks of millions of individuals to extinct in only about 100 years, leaving no one again to see this amazing species or its incredible migrations across eastern North America. 

As time passes, and the war between nature and modernization continues, we must remember extinction is forever, what is common now, can still become extinct. We as individuals must stand up for those who can’t speak for themselves and we must do whatever needs to be done to stop more species from joining the passenger pigeon, and with that i want to leave with another quote from Aldo Leopold

“There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book-pigeons cannot dive out of a cloud to make the deer run for cover, or clap their wings in thunderous applause of mast-laden woods. Book-pigeons cannot breakfast on new-mown wheat in Minnesota, and dine on blueberries in Canada. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all.”

You can read Aldo Leopold’s full writing below:

http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/dott_c/bio%20250-swecol/Activities/On%20a%20Monument%20to%20the%20Pigeon.pdf

References:

https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon