THE PASSENGER

The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once the commonest bird on the planet. Flocks numbering one billion were known from North America. During migration these flocks could be one mile wide and 300 miles long. They became such a threat to farmers that in 1703 the Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec formally excommunicated them!

In 1854 in Wayne County, New York, a local resident wrote that. `There would be days and days when the air was alive with them, hardly a break occurring in the flocks for half a day at a time. Flocks stretched as far as a person could see, one tier above another.' On 8 April 1873 at Saginaw in Michigan there was a continuous stream of passenger pigeons overhead between 7.30 in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Other reports describe flocks a mile wide flying overhead for four or five hours at a time during their migration in the early spring from the south to their breeding areas in New England, New York, Ohio and the southern Great Lakes area. The flocks were so thickly packed that a single shot could bring down thirty or forty birds and many were killed simply by hitting them with pieces of wood as they flew over hilltops.

It was these great numbers that were to be their downfall. The species would only breed in titanic flocks. In smaller numbers, they seemed to have no interest in breeding, possibly because they felt unsafe.

The trees on which these flocks fed and in which they roosted were cut down. The pigeons laid only one egg per year and were apparently very easy to hunt. Indians captured them in nets and Europeans shot them as target practice. The birds were a cheap source of meat once railways linking the Great Lakes area with New York opened in the early 1850s. By 1855, 300,000 pigeons a year were being sent to New York alone. The worst of the mass slaughter took place in the 1800s and 1870s. The scale of the operation can be judged by figures that seem almost incredible but which were carefully recorded as part of a perfectly legal and highly profitable commerce. On just one day in 1860 (23 July) 235,200 birds were sent east from Grand Rapids in Michigan. During 1874 Oceana County in Michigan sent over 1,000,000 birds to the markets in the east and two years later was sending 400,000 a week at the height of the season and a total of 1,600,000 in the year. In 1869, Van Buren County, also in Michigan, sent 7,500,000 birds to the east. Even in 1880, when numbers had already been severely reduced, 527,000 birds were shipped east from Michigan. Once the numbers had fallen below a tipping point there was no going back.

On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo, Cincinnati, Ohio.