A Species Squandered: The Amazing Story Of The Passenger Pigeon

2012Chicago, IL

It is difficult to believe that such a bird once traversed the skies of Canada and the United States. It precedes the memory of  the living. But we know with certainty that the passenger pigeon did exist in vast numbers from descriptions spanning three and a half centuries and written in at least six languages. They likely had a total population of no less than five billion individuals. Many accounts allude to flocks that darkened the sky for hours at a time. Around 1810, John James Audubon witnessed a flight that eclipsed the sun for three consecutive days.  Enough of the ten inch long birds would  alight  in a mature oak as to break the branches: woods would be ravaged by the weight of hundreds of millions of birds. The beating of countless wings would create drafts that chilled the people over whom the flocks passed. Just as amazing as the abundance of this bird was the speed with which unremitting human exploitation reduced the population from likely a billion or more in 1860 to virtually zero by 1900. The bird became a commodity that helped feed the burgeoning urban centers and was slaughtered in virtually every imaginable way. The last of the species, a captive-born bird named Martha, died around one o'clock in the afternoon on September 1, 1914. The bird and its story provide lessons for the people of today and the 2014 centenary of its extinction will be marked through numerous activities to remind us of the importance of being responsible stewards. Making sure that other species escape the fate of the passenger pigeon now lies in our hands.

Joel Greenberg