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Passenger Pigeon (C Parks and Recreation Jenkins, V. J. (1994). The lawn: A history of an American trients, breaking tree limbs with the combined weight obsession.Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution of roosting birds, consuming the food supply of some Press. birds and mammals and becoming the food supply of Short, J. R. (1991). Imagined country: Society, culture and others. environment. London: Routledge. Fossil records extend back to 100,000 years before Solecki, W., & Welch, J. (1995). Urban parks: Green spaces present and include western states not part of the re- or green walls? Landscape and Urban Planning, 32(1), cent range. There are many records from Native Amer- 93–106. ican sites during the Woodland period, early Holocene Stevenson, E. (1977). Park maker: A life of Frederick Law (ca. 500 B.C.–1200 A.D.), particularly in what are now Olmsted. New York: Macmillan. the Great Lake states. Bones were at settlement sites Taylor, D. (1999). Central Park as a model for social con- dating to about 1300 CE. but never in great quantities. trol: Urban parks, social class and leisure behaviour Anthropologist Stephen Williams has speculated that in nineteenth century America. Journal of Leisure Re- pigeon populations rose beginning around 1450–1500 search, 31(4), 426–477. CE, coinciding with a major decline in human popula- Wilson, W. H. (1989) The City Beautiful Movement. Balti- tions in the agricultural Mississippian culture that had more: John Hopkins University Press. occupied much of what is now the eastern United States since about 800 CE. The human decline occurred particularly in the lower Mississippi valley and part- way up the Ohio River. The decline may have been caused by a cooling climate during the Little Ice Age Passenger Pigeon (c. 1400–c. 1850). Climate change and abandoned agri- cultural land may have created forested habitat for a The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is legend- rising population of passenger pigeons. ary as a symbol of unbelievable abundance and of The sightings of French explorer Jacques Cartier are human-caused extinction. It was an essential living re- the first surviving record of passenger pigeon num- source to 18th and 19th century America that was over- bers; he recorded seeing “an infinite number” on 1 July exploited to extinction out of a combination of greed 1534 at Prince Edward Island. From 1540 to 1580 Span- and ignorance. ish conquistadors explored southern North America, The species occurred only in North America, pri- but made no mention of skies filled by flocks of passen- marily east of the Rocky Mountains, and bred almost ger pigeons. The explorer Samuel de Champlain exclusively in the eastern deciduous forest. There were recorded “countless numbers” on 12 July 1605 along some 3–5 billion passenger pigeons in America prior to the coast of southern Maine. the arrival of the Europeans; they comprised perhaps a The enormous nomadic flocks roamed the conti- quarter of the continent’s bird life. Yet, due entirely to nent, traveling hundreds of kilometers daily in search human activities, the passenger pigeon was extinct in of food. In most seasons they fed primarily on acorns the wild by the end of the nineteenth century, and its and beechnuts. In certain years, oaks and beech trees last representative, the fabled Martha, died in the Cin- produce superabundant crops of nuts, known as mast. cinnati Zoo on 1 September 1914. When the pigeons located a rich source of mast in the spring, they established a huge nesting colony (at least The Passenger Pigeon in Abundance hundreds of thousands of pairs), known as a “city.” Often there would be dozens of nests on a single tree. Reports of the huge numbers of passenger pigeons, in Each nest contained a single egg. Colonies ranged from passing flocks so large that they obscured the sun, 50 hectares to thousands of hectares. The largest nest- might appear to be beyond belief were they not so con- ing described (from 1871) covered much of the south- sistent among independent observers for three centu- ern two-thirds of Wisconsin. The colonies had time ries. Flocks were described as “having neither begin- only for a single nesting before the food supply was ning or end,” and the birds themselves as being “in exhausted and the birds moved on. It is unlikely that such prodigious numbers, as almost to surpass belief” the food was sufficient to allow for more a single nest- and similar superlatives. These flocks had major im- ing in a year. During summer, the birds fed on abun- pacts on the landscape, moving great quantities of nu- dant berries in the Great Lakes states and provinces. 6 5625$$P001 04-11-03 08:08:56 Passenger Pigeon Passenger Pigeons and Humans factors attracted the human predators from whose re- lentless persecution the passenger pigeon was unable Passenger pigeons were a source of fresh or preserved to recover. meat, feathers, and sport for native people and later for European settlers and their descendants. Essen- Major Factors in the Passenger Pigeon’s tially every flock that was encountered by humans at any time of year was subject to shooting, netting, and Decline other means of killing. Two factors predominated in causing the decline: habi- Commercial trade in pigeon meat, fat, and feathers tat destruction and direct exploitation by humans for began in the eighteenth century. Tens of thousands of food. Other explanations have been proposed, includ- adults and young were killed at a colony. This exten- ing climate, disease, and weather-related catastrophe, sive killing probably had little, if any, impact on pigeon but without evidence. populations until the infrastructure was available to Every passenger pigeon colony that was accessible transport pigeons and carcasses from nesting colonies to humans was exploited. Ornithologists David to markets in urban areas, beginning around 1840. In Blockstein and Harrison. B. Tordoff have argued that 1851 nearly 2 million pigeons (dead and alive) were the development of the transcontinental railroad and shipped from a single nesting. In the late nineteenth the telegraph in the nineteenth century were key fac- century from 600 to 1,200 men worked as professional tors leading to extinction. Railroads allowed access to pigeon trappers, using massive nets to capture live pi- nesting colonies, and the telegraph provided a way for geons for shooting matches and using guns, poles, fire, scouts who located colonies to inform the professional and other means to kill birds for market. pigeon trappers. Populations, although reduced, were still supera- By the time the Civil War ended, the railroad cov- bundant in the early 1870s. The nesting in Wisconsin ered most of the United States east of the Mississippi. in 1871 included nearly the entire population of the Only a handful of nesting colonies were too far from species, estimated to be more than 135 million adults rail or ship for market exploitation. Often hundreds of (less than 10 percent of what had been estimated only thousands of adults and squabs were shipped from a decades earlier). The population declined drastically single nesting. Large numbers of birds were destroyed during the 1870s. The last huge nesting, “something by locals or otherwise killed but not transported. A like 100,000 acres” (Forbush 1927, 65), took place in million birds could be lost at a single nesting. Yet, even 1878 in Michigan, near Petosky. There was a tremen- the enormous numbers of birds killed were probably dous slaughter of perhaps 10 million birds, which were not sufficient to cause the precipitous decline in the shipped out by the barrel. After that, no mass nestings population. Overhunting did not exterminate the pas- were reported. Without the mass nestings, which had senger pigeon, as is commonly believed. Rather, the provided protection from predators, nestings of small disturbance of the nesting colonies over a period of groups and isolated pairs apparently produced insuffi- almost thirty years, well over twice the lifetime of the cient numbers of offspring to maintain the species. average bird, led the birds to abandon the colonies be- Although the population probably declined be- fore they had raised young. This, coupled with slaugh- yond point of recovery by late 1880s, as many as 2,000 ter of fat nestlings, these are squabs–more than 200 pigeons were reportedly taken for market in the early grams, full of fat and apparently very tasty, as well as 1890s. By the mid-1890s, flocks of hundreds were note- adults largely eliminated replacement of the popula- worthy. By 1895, a flock of just ten pigeons drew atten- tion. tion. The end of the century brought the end of the Deforestation was also a major factor in the decline, passenger pigeon. The last reliable specimen was taken because it reduced the area available to the pigeons in 1900 in Ohio. and thus reduced the opportunities for nesting and The passenger pigeon was successful due to its no- roosting colonies. Being nomadic, passenger pigeons madic behavior and its colonial habits, which allowed traveled enormous areas to find some conditions suita- it to exploit superabundant food sources that were un- ble for nesting colonies. Because nesting colonies predictable in space and time. Additionally the num- formed only where there was sufficient mast, the re- bers were so enormous that nonhuman predators duction in the forest meant that in some years there could not reduce the population. Ironically, these same was no nesting at all. Another nineteenth-century tech- 7 5625$$P001 04-11-03 08:08:56 Passenger Pigeon nology, the portable saw mill (introduced in 1870s), Forbush, E. H. (1913). The last passenger pigeon. Bird Lore, sped the destruction of what had once been a com- 15,99–103.
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