Passenger
Pigeon -Ectopistes migratorious extinct c.1914
The most numerous bird on earth it represented about 40% of all the birds
in the U.S. In 1870 the species was already diminished when a flock 1 mile
wide by 320 miles long passed Cincinnati. James Audubon traveling next to
the Ohio River watched a column of the birds and described them … "so
that the light of the noonday sun was obscured as if by an eclipse".
This lasted the whole day and for 3 more days subsequent flocks followed.
One breeding ground in Kentucky was several miles long by 40 miles wide. Audubon
reported an incredible din and branches two feet in diameter broken by masses
of birds upon birds as they descended onto their roosting site.
Demand for cheap meat was phenomenal and professional pigeon hunters used
the innovations of telegraph and railroad to follow the flocks. Stool pigeon
decoys, pigeons with their eyes sewed shut and nailed to a post, lured their
quarry. The last great nesting flock came together in 18 96 near Bowling Green
Ohio. Hunters descended from afar and out of 250,000 birds 200,000 were taken.
Shipped in boxcars the train derailed and the wasted birds were dumped into
a ravine.
Martha, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati zoo in 1914 at 29
years of age.
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