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The Passenger Pigeon
© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
The passenger pigeon (Ectopisles migratorius, Audubon's painting
of a male is on the left) was not just a bird, but a force of nature. It was
the most numerous bird in the world, perhaps in the entire history of the
world. Flocks would fill the sky, darken the sun. Audubon described flocks of
over a billion birds, which took three days to pass overhead. Their droppings
would fall like rain. Villagers would climb onto their roof tops and kill them
with sticks and brooms. Hunters claimed to have killed as many as 50 with one
shot. Entire regions took years to recover from their feeding. And, years
later, they would be back again. But then, just before the year 1900, they were
gone. The last wild bird was shot in 1898. The last passenger pigeon (Martha)
died at the Cincinnati Zoo on Sep. 1, 1914, at the age of 29.
What happened? Over-hunting by humans seems to have been the major
cause. Apparently, our natural resources can be very fragile indeed. The
passenger pigeon should be the one species that should have gone on forever.
But it is gone, an ominous warning to us.
Each species has its own lower population limit, below which there is
little hope of recovery. That limit has been reached for many of the endangered
species of today. That limit was surprisingly high for the passenger pigeon;
that species needed very large populations, to even survive. And it is gone
forever.
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