The Mysterious Disappearance of a Wandering Migrant
This text initially appeared within the spring 2025 situation of Undertaking Upland Journal.
Every day, as I depart the New Hampshire Fish and Sport Headquarters in Harmony, I make a degree to go to a glass case. There, within the backside nook, rests a mounted specimen of a passenger pigeon. It exists subtly, not often seen by passersby. That specimen impressed me to aim to know the conservation thriller of the passenger pigeon’s extinction.
The lack of the passenger pigeon is likely one of the most stunning extinction tales within the Americas. It’s each mysterious and a darkish reminder of the profound affect people have on the panorama.
Should you lived in North America earlier than the 20th century, you may need skilled a flock of migrating passenger pigeons. Throughout migration occasions, the sound of the birds was overwhelming. The sky darkened as their our bodies, every weighing slightly below a pound, blocked the solar. For days, passenger pigeon droppings fell from the sky like snow. Thus, it got here as an excellent shock when the species went extinct within the wild in 1900. Simply fourteen years later, Martha, the final and most well-known passenger pigeon, born in captivity, died on the age of twenty-nine within the Cincinnati Zoo.
Whereas studying 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Earlier than Columbus by Charles C. Mann, I used to be fascinated by its exploration of the panorama administration practices of Indigenous peoples. The ebook explains how colonizers mistook the “Backyard of Eden” they “found” as a pure phenomenon reasonably than the results of long-term human administration. It additionally accommodates a couple of pages on the archaeological file of the passenger pigeon.
Mann describes a idea suggesting that Indigenous peoples managed the passenger pigeon inhabitants. In accordance with this idea, the huge decline in North America’s Indigenous inhabitants attributable to post-colonization illnesses led to an overpopulation of passenger pigeons.
It’s a reasonably stunning idea—and a debated one as effectively. These peculiarities solely deepened my curiosity. What organic impacts did the passenger pigeon have on the broader ecological system of North America? What was it wish to witness the unimaginable scenes created by their huge populations? And, most significantly, why did the passenger pigeon go extinct?
Passenger Pigeon Biology
A Message from Martha by Mark Avery is a ebook absolutely devoted to the passenger pigeon. From a organic perspective, Avery does a wonderful job of highlighting key information about this hen, also known as the “Blue Meteor.”
Avery explains that the passenger pigeon weighed roughly twelve ounces and measured about sixteen inches in size, with males being barely bigger than females. In his ebook, Avery contains considered one of John Muir’s private accounts describing the hen and its plumage:
The breast of the male is a fantastic rosy crimson, the decrease a part of the neck behind and alongside the perimeters altering from the crimson of the breast to gold, emerald inexperienced and wealthy crimson. The final colour of the higher elements is grayish blue, the underneath elements white. The intense size of the hen is about seventeen inches; the finely modeled slender tail about eight inches, and extent of wings twenty 4 inches. The females are scarcely much less lovely… each colour identical to the fantastic wooden geese.
The vary of the passenger pigeon intently mirrored that of the American woodcock, migrating from the northern elements of the japanese and central United States and Canada to the southern areas through the winter months. Their main meals supply was tree mast, and their vary mirrored this.
“This vary displays the distribution of the American beech, crimson oak, white oak, and American chestnut bushes—a very powerful sources of meals for the passenger pigeon,” wrote Avery. Whereas tree mast was the pigeon’s main meals supply, in addition they foraged for different meals, together with wild rice, berries, and invertebrates.
The passenger pigeon’s Latin identify, Ectopistes migratorius, interprets to “wandering migrant,” aptly describing their conduct. These birds relied closely on tree mast, and their actions have been dictated by meals availability reasonably than strictly by seasonal migration. This conduct highlights a crucial facet of their ecology: flocks of thousands and thousands relocated to areas with adequate meals provides. Remarkably, the pigeons remembered places with plentiful tree crops from earlier years and sought out areas the place melting snow uncovered springtime meals sources.
The hen’s sturdy reminiscence and proclivity to maneuver to areas with excessive meals densities usually resulted in crops filled with feed. “There are accounts of birds with crops as massive as oranges as a result of they have been so crammed with meals,” wrote Avery. Along with being opportunistic eaters, passenger pigeons would regurgitate the contents of their crops in the event that they discovered a extra fascinating meals.
The Dilution Impact
To grasp a key facet of the thriller surrounding the extinct passenger pigeon, the “dilution impact” as a survival technique have to be thought-about. Merely put, particular person birds had no important protection towards predators. As an alternative, they relied on their overwhelming numbers for defense. As Avery elegantly put it, “For a passenger pigeon to take advantage of the arithmetic of the dilution impact, it nonetheless needed to only be one within the crowd—ideally one of many center crowd.”
One of the well-known accounts of the passenger pigeon comes from John James Audubon. After witnessing a nesting website in Kentucky, he wrote:
The dung lay a number of inches deep, overlaying the entire extent of the roosting place, like a mattress of snow. Many bushes two ft in diameter, I noticed, have been damaged off at no nice distance from the bottom; and the branches of most of the largest and tallest had given approach, as if the forest had been swept by a twister. Every part proved to me that the variety of birds resorting to this a part of the forest have to be immense past conception…The howlings of the wolves now reached our ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears, raccoons, opossums, and pole-cats have been seen sneaking off, while eagles and hawks of various species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures, got here to supplant them and revel in their share of the spoil.
The passenger pigeon’s reliance on massive numbers for survival was evident in practically each facet of its conduct, together with its breeding habits. A single grownup passenger pigeon nested in a number of states all through its life—an essential organic element in unraveling the thriller of their extinction. In every colony, the birds nested concurrently, a phenomenon Avery described as “excessive synchrony of nesting inside colonies.”
Nesting was a aggressive race, with birds vying for spots deeper inside the colony, the place they have been safer from predators. This conduct additional amplified the dilution impact, lowering the probability of any particular person hen being focused by predators.
Passenger Pigeon Breeding Behaviors
One of the fervent debates surrounding the passenger pigeon, revisited repeatedly, issues how the species reproduced to keep up or develop its inhabitants. Central to this debate is using reverse-engineered mathematical fashions to foretell inhabitants dynamics. Within the case of the passenger pigeon, the distinction between laying one or two eggs might profoundly affect our understanding of their inhabitants decline.
A. W. Schorger’s The Passenger Pigeon: Its Historical past and Extinction, revealed in 1973, stays a cornerstone of analysis on the species. Schorger meticulously dissected eyewitness accounts of nesting websites, some stretching as much as thirty miles lengthy and 5 miles extensive. His work offered invaluable insights into nesting conduct, drawing from in depth firsthand descriptions. Practically each ebook on the passenger pigeon revealed since has relied on the detailed accounts Schorger compiled.
Probably the most compelling debate associated to nesting conduct issues whether or not passenger pigeons laid one or two eggs. Whereas the one-egg idea has garnered probably the most help, Avery explores the two-egg idea in important element.
Avery’s first piece of organic proof for the two-egg idea is the conduct of comparable species. “Mourning doves, inventory doves, wooden pigeons, turtle doves, and collared doves all lay a clutch of two,” he wrote. Avery additionally thought-about established information in regards to the inventory dove:
Our 50 pairs of Passenger Pigeons would, if Schorger is true, have laid 50 eggs. If we assume that all of them hatched (which could be very unlikely, given infertility, predation and dangerous occasions similar to late snowfalls) and all fledged (which is much more unlikely, what with predation and the meals operating out), then (given 40% first yr survival just like the Inventory Dove) solely 20 of them would enter the breeding inhabitants, and we’d like there to be 45 of them to steadiness the books. That may be a chasm of a distinction – as an alternative of getting 100 Passenger Pigeons the following yr we solely have 75.
One thing doesn’t add up right here, and I’ve checked my sums, so it’s not me! And that’s why we’ve a conundrum.
Schorger theorized that passenger pigeons might have nested a number of occasions a yr, a speculation supported by ecologist Enrique Bucher in a 1992 analysis paper.
One other idea that might clarify the pigeon’s inhabitants upkeep means that the species had unusually excessive grownup survival charges.
Passenger Pigeons and Indigenous Peoples
My ancestors, the Mi’kmaq, would have cherished the springtime arrival of the passenger pigeon (Ples). It was a supply of sustenance, hunted to offer an excellent bounty on the finish of an extended winter. Ples can also be a constellation that chases the bear (Muin) throughout the sky. It’s represented by the star Seginus, or Gamma Boötis, which returns every spring and summer season as a part of the constellation Boötes.
The passenger pigeon held cultural significance for a lot of Indigenous peoples. In Joel Greenberg’s A Feathered River Throughout the Sky, he explores the Seneca’s historical past with the passenger pigeon, or jah’gowa, which implies “massive bread.” Greenberg quotes Willie Gordon, a descendant of Seneca Chief Cornplanter, who acknowledged, “We might be fats consuming squabs and ingesting pigeon oil.” Very similar to bear fats, pigeon oil was crucial for human winter survival. Greenberg additionally cites an account from John Lawson in 1700, who described: “You might discover a number of Indian Cities, of not above 17 Homes, which have greater than 100 Gallons of Pigeons Oil, or Fats; they use it with Pulse, or Bread, as we do Butter.”
In accordance with Greenberg, passenger pigeon stays have been present in settlements as outdated as 10,000 B.C. Searching these birds was intently tied to their nesting exercise. Throughout their quick egg-laying window, Indigenous communities gathered for big looking occasions involving each youngsters and adults. Strategies included using bows and arrows, nets, poles, and even golf equipment.
Apparently, it’s believed that tribes wouldn’t have regarded kindly on the looking of grownup birds in nesting websites earlier than the chicks hatched. An 1842 report that noticed the Sioux famous, “The Indians by no means disturbed pigeons or geese by capturing at them when nesting, and that the lifetime of a person doing so wouldn’t be protected among the many Sioux.” This displays a conservation ethic grounded in reciprocity and respect for pure cycles.
What Led to the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon?
Many questions stay about how passenger pigeons existed earlier than Columbus. Their ecological file is a topic of intense debate, with Greenberg and Mann presenting differing views. Mann summarizes the conclusions of archaeologist Thomas Neumann: “The conclusion was apparent: Passenger pigeons weren’t as quite a few earlier than Columbus. ‘What occurred was that the affect of European contact altered the ecological dynamics in such a approach that the Passenger Pigeon inhabitants exploded.’ The avian throngs Audubon noticed have been ‘outbreak populations—at all times a symptom of an awfully disrupted ecological system.’”
If true, the overpopulation of passenger pigeons might have set the stage for an ecological overshoot. Extra particularly, this case concerned the mixed calls for of those birds and the arrival of colonizers, which exceeded the regenerative capability of forested ecosystems.
What’s most intriguing in regards to the ultimate chapter of the passenger pigeon’s historical past is its seemingly abrupt disappearance. Whereas there is no such thing as a doubt that human exploitation by means of market looking performed a job, Greenberg wrote, “I’ve struggled to simply accept as adequate the purported elements that diminished a billion or extra birds to zero in 4 many years. This abruptness led to the fanciful explanations superior through the early twentieth century and has lengthy left others feeling unhappy.”
One of the imaginative theories relating to the extinction of the final passenger pigeon populations seems in William Mershon’s 1907 ebook The Passenger Pigeon. Within the chapter titled “A Novel Idea of Extinction,” Mershon means that the final flocks flew out into the ocean (or the Nice Lakes) in quest of meals and nesting grounds, in the end perishing there. This idea shouldn’t be accepted at this time.
Though I’m certainly not an skilled on this matter, plainly these books collectively inform an extended story that begins in 1492. It’s now broadly accepted that Indigenous populations have been far bigger than early historic accounts point out. Illnesses introduced by colonizers decimated Indigenous populations to such an extent that their ecological affect, together with looking passenger pigeons, went unchecked. Passenger pigeons persevered for over a century earlier than important colonization introduced bigger human populations again into these ecosystems.
Colonizers launched market looking and introduced widespread deforestation. With the enlargement of railroads, market looking actions intensified, resulting in much more aggressive exploitation of wildlife.
The final recognized passenger pigeon nesting websites have been within the few remaining old-growth forests. These birds relied on mast from mature bushes, however as logging diminished the variety of such bushes, their meals sources dwindled. The lack of forests additionally elevated the volatility of mast manufacturing. Avery famous, “States similar to Ohio would have been very largely coated with forests on the time of the European invasion (round 95%); it was solely 54% forest in 1853, 18% in 1883, and by 1900 solely about 10% of the state was forested.
Because the pigeon inhabitants decreased, its “dilution impact” survival technique grew to become much less efficient and in the end harmful. Some speculate that, like their Indigenous neighbors, the birds might have been affected by illnesses launched by non-native species, significantly given their tendency to type dense colonies.
Greenberg notes that by the 1870s, passenger pigeons had begun abandoning their nesting websites. He wrote, “With the ever-increasing depth of exploitation, the birds grew to become much less tolerant of disturbance and faster to surrender their breeding aspirations.” As forests vanished, the provision of appropriate nesting and wintering places dwindled. This shortage elevated the pigeons’ vulnerability to predation; with fewer locations to go, their actions grew to become extra predictable.
A Stark Reminder
The extinction of the passenger pigeon serves as a stark reminder of the intricate interconnections inside ecosystems and the possibly devastating affect of human exercise on these delicate balances. Regardless of our need for easy explanations, the dynamics of biodiversity and ecology are complicated. They embody a myriad of things that may set off cascading results past comprehension.
What else have we misplaced due to the extinction of the passenger pigeon? What forms of habitat did their disturbances create? To what extent did their droppings fertilize forests? How produce other species been impacted by the lack of such a traditionally plentiful hen? These are inquiries to which we’ll seemingly by no means have definitive solutions.
The story of the passenger pigeon stands as a poignant reminder of the significance of environmental stewardship. We should relearn how one can take part in pure methods reasonably than destroy them.
As A. W. Schorger so aptly put it, “This species grew to become extinct by means of the avarice and thoughtlessness of man.”
Learn Extra
Why No One’s Heard Of The Passenger Pigeon
The Extinct California Wild Turkey: Meleagris Californica
The Labrador Duck: A Story of Fashionable Extinction
Extinction: The Historical past of Misplaced Canine Breeds
