Our culpability in the demise of the passenger pigeon

[Milossarian]

The general story we get from our history lessons is that there were once so many passenger pigeons flying around, the sky was black with them.

But our heinous, bloodthirsty ancestors, when they weren't busy wantonly destroying the buffalo, took pot-shots at passenger pigeons until they eventually went extinct.

Is this true?

It seems hard to believe. I can't imagine the bird would have any food value. So it would have basically been shot for sport and nothing more. If there were really that many of them, it seems there would have needed to be a lot of people doing a lot of senseless shooting. Why would they single out this particular bird?

Sounds fishy to me. What's the Straight Dope?

[August West]

Hey,Milo.
Our predecessors here in Wisconsin were partially culpable. They used to use giant shotguns, something like a 4 gauge, called a 'punt gun' to blast 'em out of the trees. IIRC, they were used to feed hogs and other livestock. A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold has a great section on this bird and it's extinction.

[tcburnett]

Originally posted by Milossarian
The general story we get from our history lessons is that there were once so many passenger pigeons flying around, the sky was black with them.

But our heinous, bloodthirsty ancestors, when they weren't busy wantonly destroying the buffalo, took pot-shots at passenger pigeons until they eventually went extinct.

Is this true?

Better than that. Pigeons were caught and nailed through the feet to stools so other pigeons would come down to be shot. Hence the term 'stool pigeon'. Pigeons have as much food value as chickens. You just have to kill a few more. Yep, it's true. They paved paradise with the bones of the buffalo (or maybe it is American Bison) and passenger pigeons.

[bibliophage]

From Encyclopedia AmericanaThe passenger pigeon's decline and extinction were as dramatic as its numbers. . . . The swift decline remains a mystery. Many theories have been advanced to account for it, such as disease, destruction of the bird's food supply by the clearing of the land, disastrous storms, and ruthless slaughter for food by human beings.Encyclopedia Britannica, on the other hand, declares unequivocally that the birds were "hunted to extinction by man."

[CrankyAsAnOldMan]

Didn't we also raid their nests like crazy to get the tender little squabs? They were like gourmet food, all the best restaurants server them.


mmmmmmMMMMMmmmmmm, Squabs.

[lswote]

How come the conservationists weren't able to save a few when it was realized that they were close to extinction and rebuild their numbers like was done with the buffalo? Surely there were those who tried to save a few, what happened? Why were none able to be save?

[stuyguy]

Since this thread is staggering around like a blindfolded drunk, it can't hurt too much if I add my halfbaked two cents.

I once heard that the pp's needed -- I don't know why -- a sort of critical mass to thrive. Once their numbers diminished to a certain point, presumably through hunting or lost breeding grounds, the enture population count plummetted and went extinct. Why they needed such vast numbers to survive as a species is beyond me (did they hunt buffalo?), but that's what I heard.

Hey, where's the board's resident 44 year-old NJ bird expert?

[mipsman]

I too remember reading that the passenger pigeon was one of those communal animals that needed to be in huge numbers to breed and that habitat destruction of the forests was at least as destructive to them as shooting them. Even though "the sky was black with them", the ground underneath the enormous flocks was "whitened". Might not be a good idea to revive them in their former numbers, or if you do, at least have an umbrella when they pass overhead.

[Phobos]

quick internet search....

The Passenger Pigeon is now extinct. Over hunting, the clearing of forests to make way for agriculture, and perhaps other factors doomed the species. The decline was well under way by the 1850’s.

The last nesting birds were reported in the Great Lakes region in the 1890’s. The last reported individuals in the wild were shot at Babcock, Wisconsin in 1899, and in Pike County, Ohio on March 24, 1900. Some individuals, however, remained in captivity.

The last Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died alone at the Cincinnati Zoo at about 1:00 pm on September 1, 1914. Who could have dreamed that within a few decades, the once most numerous bird on Earth would be forever gone?

[Milossarian]

The last reported individuals in the wild were shot at Babcock, Wisconsin in 1899

Damn, ChiefWahoo, you Wisconsinites are cold.

[CalMeacham]

This is one reason that there are organizations like "Ducks Unlimited" -- they aim to preserve Ducks (for hunting, it's true. But they do, indeed, want to preserve them). We don't imagine that Ducks could become extinct. There are just so many of them, right? But that's exactly how they felt about the Passenger Pigeon.



When I as a kid ion the 1960's I recall every fall watching HUGE flocks of birds migrating -- you could see veritable RIVERS of them in the sky, broad swaths of birdflocks so high that the individual birds were dots with wings, filling the sky from north to south. They didn't fill it from side to side, but we're not talking about a thin thread of black in the sky -- the flocks were huge moving ribbons of birds.THAT is what I imagine the sightings of passenger pigeions must have been like. It bothers me that I have not seen such a sight in man years.
I'm not talking about ancient history here -- this is less than forty years ago. I don't know what kind of birds they were making up those flocks -- they literally were too far away to see. But how many species are following the Passenger Pigeon into oblivion?