The pigeon’s extinction is a reminder for us to pay attention.
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| A passenger pigeon taken in 1893 in Westfield,
Massachusetts, mounted and on display at the N.H. Fish and Game Department in Concord. |
Imagine for a minute a bird that flies in flocks so enormous
that they blot out the sun, taking hours to pass and in such intensity of sound
that you’d swear a freight train was passing near.
Imagining is the now only way you can experience the
passenger pigeon. It has been extinct for 100 years. Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, died September 1, 1914, in
captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
It was a beautiful and strong bird. In his book “A FeatheredRiver across the Sky,” author Joel Greenberg says the passenger pigeon “looked
like a mourning dove on steroids.” Its muscular body carried its 10 to 12
ounces along migrations across eastern North America, from the Gulf of Mexico
in Texas to the Canadian Maritimes and west to Alberta.
Males were slate-blue and gray, with a breast of iridescent
copper and purple. Females were a bit drabber, but delicately brilliant. Individually
and collectively, in their enormous flocks, they were a remarkable sight,
flying low like a tight school of fish, splitting off and re-forming in great undulating
clouds.
While some birds would defy the crowd and fly in solo pairs,
they would be seen twice a year as they moved over the lands, including here in
New Hampshire.
Loading Trees by the Thousands
They loaded individual trees by the thousands, to the point
where branches would sag heavy with their weight and break. They would arrive
in densities so thick that birds were atop birds.
In “A Feathered River,” Greenberg describes John Josselyn’s
travels through New England in the 1600s, encountering a single beech tree in
New Hampshire that supported 500 nests.
As easy prey, passenger pigeons were a staple in the diet of
native peoples thousands of years ago. Northern goshawks, Cooper’s hawks and
peregrine falcons likely thrived on them, too.
And from nearly the start of their arrival to North America,
Europeans killed them, sometimes for sport, sometimes for market, sometimes for
hungry mouths and sometimes for no good reason at all. In New Hampshire, large
flocks of passenger pigeons were said to have helped stave off starvation in
1781 when crops failed.
Greenberg sites accounts of children grabbing pigeons by the
feet and providing parents with meals. They were taken by rifle, shotgun, hand
nets, nets strung between trees and all sorts of clever means. As rails were
laid and city markets developed, pigeoners – as they were called – devised ever
more improvised ways to kill, prepare, store and sell passenger pigeons for the
plate.
Shooting ‘Til the End
Some pigeoners set up long poles at an angle, points
protruding above the treetops, where pigeons would alight by the score. One
well-aimed shotgun blast would take dozens of birds at a time. Some trained
live pigeons to set atop a stool hoisted by a pole to attract hordes of wild
pigeons, hence the name stool pigeon.
They were shot as sport in competition, in pigeon shoots.
And when passenger pigeons were gone, clay pigeons took their place.
For three centuries, people killed pigeons throughout North
America. And when their numbers declined in the 1870s, some remaining passenger
pigeons amassed in great numbers. In April 1871, pigeons began nesting in
central Wisconsin, ultimately gathering in an area 850 square miles, the
largest recorded pigeon nesting site ever. There, they were slaughtered by the
millions.
Of course, habitat
loss played a role in their demise. Some speculate disease may have hastened
it. But few biologists dispute what brought an end to the passenger pigeon.
“Europeans began the killing on or about July 12, 1605, and
their successors, the residents of Canada and the United States, did not stop
until there were literally no more birds left,” writes Greenberg. “When that
happened, they shot mourning doves in the belief they were passenger pigeons.
Virtually every time Homo sapiens
crossed paths with the pigeons, pigeons died.”
A New Generation of Hope
The last one to be killed in New Hampshire was either a bird
in Acworth in 1881 (mounted and on display at the town library), or one shot by
W.W. Flint in 1885 in Concord.
By the turn of the century, the last wild passenger pigeons
were gone. Only a handful of captive pigeons remained in private collections or
zoos. And by September 1, 1914, the aging Martha gave up at the Cincinnati Zoo.
The end of a species. Every last one. Gone.
The passenger pigeon’s demise came at a time when mankind’s
extreme mistreatment of nature was also inspiring a new generation of hope.
Forests in New Hampshire and beyond were being cut to the bone, filling the air
with wildfire smoke and clogging Manchester’s mills with silt from the eroding
White Mountains. The Weeks Act of 1911 helped protect the White Mountains and
other forests.
Theodore Roosevelt and scores of other conservationists
inspired new laws to limit market hunting and build what’s now known as the
North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Outlaw market hunting; regulate
hunters; put taxes on hunting equipment toward science and management; allow
states to manage game. It’s not perfect, but it’s still pretty good.
Federal laws were passed and treaties signed to outlaw
hunting of birds and other migratory species and allow for their recovery. We’ve
seen many species recover, including iconic animals like bison and bald eagles.
Is There Hope?
But 100 years since the passenger pigeon’s demise, the cloud
of extinction hovers. And it might be a growing cloud.
Even common species can become rare. In New Hampshire and
throughout the Northeast, native bats have been ravaged by disease that
biologists are scrambling to understand. One biologist told me that the loss of
bats is akin to losing, say, all of our frog species.
According to the International Union for Conservation of
Nature, 30 percent of amphibians are at risk of extinction; 21 percent of
mammals, reptiles and fish; and 12 percent of birds. The culprits are many and
complex: loss of habitat, pollution, illegal hunting or take and the
introduction of non-native species.
And the biggie: Climate change. It may threaten a lot more
than polar bears. The rapidly shifting climate could bring extinctions from
pole to pole and the many places in between, especially the tropics, the
breadbaskets of biological diversity. In the oceans, in the forests, rivers and
skies, some species are hanging on by a thread. Small shifts in the world’s
temperatures, in the ocean’s chemical composition and in sea levels could spell
the end for some species.
Is there hope? There has to be.
If nothing else, the loss of the passenger pigeon reminds us
that we need to pay attention. Take care of what we have. Now. Before it’s too
late.
