The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon was a fair sized bird measuring 17 inches in length. It was a grayish-blue bird with a red breast. Its tail was long and graduated with the feathers narrowing to a point.

The Passenger Pigeon migrated in huge flocks. It was not uncommon for it to take three days or more for the entire flock to pass over a single spot. Smaller flocks and stragglers would pass over the area for another couple of weeks. It was an impressive sight and noted in many journals.

There were several factors that lead to the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. Many believe that the primary cause was the commercial exploitation of pigeon meat. The bird was a readily available target and easy pickings. Commercial hunters started netting and shooting the Passenger Pigeons, and selling them in the city. They were also captured and used as live targets for target shooting, and buried in fields and gardens for fertilizer.

The hunters were quite inventive in their efforts to net large numbers of Passenger Pigeons. Some used a live decoy bird. They would sew its eyes shut, attach it to a circular stool at the end of a stick, raise it up in the air, and then drop it down. The "stool pigeon" would flutter its wings in an attempt to land. Gregarious by nature, the birds flying by try to land by the bird in distress only to get tangled in the hunter's nets. Rather than shoot the netted birds, the hunters would crush their head between their thumb and forefinger.

The numbers were dwindling. Conservationists tried to stop the slaughters but what few laws were passed, were not enforced. The last large nesting site was in Petoskey, Michigan. Fifty-thousand birds were killed every day for nearly 5 months. When the few surviving birds tried to set up a new nesting site, they were located and slaughtered as well.

The final flock of Passenger Pigeons was wiped out of existence in 1896. The sad fact remains, the hunters knew it was the only surviving flock still in existence. That didn't stop them.

There were a few birds that survived the slaughter but the Passenger Pigeon was highly gregarious. Unless they were in a large flock, they would not breed. Attempts to breed them in captivity failed for the same reasons. The Passenger Pigeons were dying out and at that point there was little that could be done about it.

On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon died. She had been kept in the Cincinnati Zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio until her death. She was then frozen and sent to the Smithsonian Institute. Skinned and mounted, she is currently in the museum's archived collection and not on display.