Passenger Pigeon Extinction

As you walk down the street waving at the people and buggies passing by you begin to hear a muffled roar. As it grows louder and louder others begin to take notice and stop what they are doing to listen to the strange noise. Then in the distance you begin to see it, a huge dark mass approaching. Within minutes the black horde is over you and roaring louder than a freight train. You are astonished to see birds, thousands and thousands of birds! They block out the sun, and people around you begin screaming and running but you can hear nothing except for the flocks incessant flapping. 

Passenger pigeon Martha in her cage. Courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo.

Passenger Pigeons 

The passenger pigeon,  Ectopistes migratorius, was a species of pigeon that at one time accounted for between 25 to 40 percent of all birds in North America. Best estimates say there were between 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons at their peak in the early to mid 1800s and it is possible that they were the most populous bird in the world. Its scientific name is of course derived from Latin, Ectopistes means “migrating” and migratorius means “moving or wandering”. Males measured about 16 1⁄2 inches long while the females were generally about an inch shorter. They had a black beak, bluish gray head, and dull gray back feathers that had streaks of black throughout. The backs of their necks would range in color from purple, green, and bronze. The breast was a soft rose color that gradually turned light peach at the sides and white towards the lower abdomen, their feet were bright red. Females generally had less vibrant colors, resembling a mourning dove with their head and back feathers being  brownish gray and their breasts being a light cinnamon color. 

Drawing of a passenger pigeon. Courtesy of history.com.

The pigeons lived in the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the United States and in central Canada. They would migrate from Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia down South to parts of Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. However their main nesting areas ranged from the Great Lakes region to as far East as New York. Rarely were the pigeons found as far West as the Dakotas. However this was because the pigeons main habitat was hardwood forests that provided them with both areas to nest in and a food source. Most of their diet consisted of various nuts, seeds, and berries. Worms and other insects were also consumed but only at times when more organic food sources were not as plentiful. 

Map showing the pigeons range and primary breeding ground. Courtesy of BirdWatching Magazine.

The most remarkable aspect of the passenger pigeon was the massive flocks that they lived in. These flocks would consist of millions of birds that would block out the sun as they flew by and created so much noise that all sound in the general area was drowned out. Simon Pokagon, leader of a Potawatomi tribe, described the sound like, “an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me. As I listened more intently, I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm, and beautiful.” As the birds neared, he watched in wonder as “I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season.” Pokagon went on to describe the birds as they flew saying that when they reached a valley they would plunge over the side, creating a sight similar to a waterfall but more magnificent than any one he had ever seen. 

Another account of a flock flying over Columbus, Ohio asserts that, “Children screamed and ran for home, Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed.” When the birds finally passed a couple hours later, “the town looked ghostly in the now-bright sunlight that illuminated a world plated with pigeon ejecta.” John James Audubon, the man credited with identifying most of the bird species in North America, claimed he once saw a mile wide flock fly over him that lasted three days. 

Drawing of John Audubon watching a flock of passenger pigeons. Courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo.

Likely to no one's surprise these massive flocks required a lot of food and it is said that they would descend on an area and eat up every morsel that could be found. Many farmers saw them as a nuisance since they could eat up entire crops and would consume all the foreageables that a farmer might use to supplement food for his livestock. The birds were very adaptable and collaborated with each other when it came to finding food and rearing young, making them an ideal pack species. Predators generally did not bother them as their sheer numbers kept them safe, a tactic known as “predator satiation”. 

When these flocks nested they would take over entire forests. The birds would pack dozens of nests into a single tree, sometimes weighing them down so much that limbs would snap and the trunks would even topple over! One time a group of hunters accidentally disturbed the pigeons nesting grounds and caused them to frenzy, terrifying the men with the tremendous uproar. The Commonwealth, a newspaper in Fond du La, Wisoncsin ran a statement from one of the men saying, “Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway, accompanied by as many steamboats groaning off steam, with an equal quota of R.R. trains passing through covered bridges—imagine these massed into a single flock, and you possibly have a faint conception of the terrific roar.” 

Drawing of hunters shooting at a flock of pigeons. Courtesy of All About Birds.

Despite all the fear and dread that a flock of these feathered animals could bring, some on the frontier enjoyed seeing the fouls come through their area. They were free protein that could be easily harvested. Men really didn’t even have to aim their guns, just point in the direction of the flock, fire, and usually a few would tumble down. They were so easy to harvest in fact that a pole could be raised in their  path and multiple birds would usually hit it and fall to the ground. 

Painting of male and female passenger pigeons by Louis Agassi Fuertes.

Extinction 

Even though the passenger pigeon had unprecedented numbers they could not survive the encroachment of human civilization. Subsistence hunting was not the issue, what threatened the birds existence was professional hunters. After the American Civil War, the expansion of the railroad and the telegraph allowed hunters to more easily follow and track the birds. When a flock was spotted in an area the telegraph would transmit the sighting to other parts of the country, then hundreds of hunters would board trains and quickly travel to the region. Harvested birds were packed into wooden barrels and then shipped to cities where they would be sold for meat, often times for as little as 50 cents a dozen. A whole economy began to form in areas where the birds frequented, barrel manufacturers, the railroad, hunting suppliers all booned in these regions. 

Two newspaper clippings mentioning the pigeons. Courtesy of the Hoosier State Chronicles.

Unfortunately for the pigeon it was not just regular hunting that was taking place. Hunters would use nets to trap them, burn their roosts and shoot the fleeing birds, even soaking corn in whiskey to poison them when they ate it. One method that was employed to kill many at once involved putting sulfur in a stone pot and burning it under their roosts, fumes from the sulfur would rise up and suffocate the poor animals. Pokagon with great sadness would comment on these methods asking what type of divine punishment would be “awaiting our white neighbors who have so wantonly butchered and driven from our forests these wild pigeons, the most beautiful flowers of the animal creation of North America.”

Illustration showing how the birds would be captured in a huge net. Courtesy of The Dish.

Ultimately the pigeons tactic of flying in large flocks to ward off predators was their undoing, making it easy for hunters to spot and follow them. The birds may have been able to survive such slaughter if it wasn’t for hunters also destroying their nests and killing the mothers before they had a chance to reproduce. 

The population began to drop rapidly in the 1860s and by the mid-1890s the flocks numbered in the dozens instead of the millions seen decades before. Not long after, the wild population was nonexistent and the only ones still alive were those kept in three captive breeding flocks across the Midwest. The last wild passenger pigeon known to be killed was “Buttons” in Pike County, Ohio around 1900. The pigeon somehow got into the hands of the sheriff's wife who, despite not being the one who killed it, taxidermied it and sewed button eyes onto it. Roughly seven decades later a man named Press Clayton Southworth took responsibility for killing the poor girl. He claimed he was just a boy at the time and did not know her species when he shot her, feeling ashamed after he retrieved her and realized what she was. He likely mistook her for a mourning dove at first.

Buttons the passenger pigeon. Courtesy of BRANDL.

They still existed in some zoos across the United States but proved to be poor breeders in captivity. On September 1, 1914 the last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was about 29 years old and had a health condition that caused her to tremble, unfortunately she was never able to lay a fertile egg. After she died her body was preserved in a 300-pound ice block and shipped to the Smithsonian where she was taxidermied and put on display. The plaque under her protective glass dome read:  “Last of her species, died at 1 p.m., 1 September 1914, age 29, in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden. EXTINCT”

Martha the passenger pigeon. Courtesy of NPR.

Unfortunately even as the pigeons population was clearly dwindling no real efforts were made to save them. Joel Greenberg, a research associate with Chicago’s Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and Field Museum said that “People just slaughtered them more intensely. They killed them until the very end.” Michigan was the only state to try, though rather weakly, to curb hunting efforts. In the 1870s a bill was passed in the Michigan legislature to ban netting the pigeons within two miles of their nesting grounds, but this law was not heavily enforced and few violators were arrested. In 1897 a bill was introduced in the Michigan legislature to ban all hunting of passenger pigeons for the next 10 year. However it was a futile effort as what few wild pigeons remained would not have been able to bring back the population. Some scientists did try to save the pigeon but were too late as between 1909 and 1912 the American Ornithologist’s Union offered $1,500 (over $43,000 in today’s money) to anyone that could find an active nest or nesting colony of them, but there just were not any left. 

Some modern scientists believe that the passenger pigeon could have survived if conservation efforts had started just a little sooner. They think the pigeon was an “outbreak” species, similar to locusts, meaning that population size grows rapidly under the right conditions but can also reduce rapidly. Theorizing that the pigeon could survive such a swing in population numbers as long as they were not too low. Some ornithologists also theorize that humans cutting down trees and destroying the birds natural habitat aided in reducing their numbers even further. 

Taxidermy passenger pigeon. Courtesy of The Northern Express.

Rise of Conservation

The story of the passenger pigeon does not have to be all sad. Their demise helped to spread environmental awareness, and birthed the modern conservation movement. In 1900, Republican Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa was the first to introduce a wildlife-protection bill which would ban the interstate shipping of unlawfully procured game. On the United States House floor Lacey lamented, “The wild pigeon, formerly in flocks of millions, has entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. We have given an awful exhibition of slaughter and destruction, which may serve as a warning to all mankind. Let us now give an example of wise conservation of what remains of the gifts of nature.” That year Congress passed the Lacey Act which was then followed by the tougher Weeks-McLean Act in 1913. This act regulated the shooting of migratory birds and allowed the Secretary of Agriculture to set nationwide hunting seasons, prohibiting the shooting of animals during their mating season in the Spring. Five years later the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed which protected not only the birds but also their nests, eggs, and feathers. 

Portrait of John F. Lacey. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The lessons learned by the extinction of the passenger pigeon also went on to help prevent the extinction of another bird species. In the 1960s the dickcissel, a bird similar to a sparrow, faced a rapid decline in population and ornithologists predicted that they would be extinct by 2000. It took decades for scientists to discover the reason behind their population decrease. In the winter the native grassland birds form into roughly a dozen huge flocks and migrate to Venezuela. Rice farmers in the country considered them to be a pest and hired crop dusters to fly over their roosts and spray pesticides on them. Being in large flocks, it was easy for double digit percentages of the birds world population to be destroyed in mere minutes. In the 1990s conservationists and scientists held negotiations with the farmers and showed them that the dickcissel posed no economic threat to their crops. At the same time, they invoked the memory of the passenger pigeon extinction to rally scientists and environmentalists in America and Europe to gain support for their cause. The scientists were successful and the dickcissel population has stabilized over the years, though not at the numbers they once were. 

A dickcissel. Courtesy of Daniel Behm/Audubon.

Today the passenger pigeon continues to inspire scientists and artists who raise awareness for endangered species. Sculptor Todd McGrain for example has crafted 5 huge bronze public memorials to the bird which helps remind people of how easily a species can be lost. Another organization called The Lost Bird Project has created an interactive origami passenger pigeon for people to fold and keep in order to remind them of conservation efforts. The founder says that thousands have been folded so far and stands as a symbol for the once monstrous flocks that roamed North America. 

Todd McGrain’s statues. Courtesy of Audubon Magazine.

During the 100 year anniversary of their extinction in 2014 museums, universities, and libraries across the country came together to teach about the pigeon and its extinction. Advocating ways to prevent other species from suffering the same fate. There are over 1,300 endangered species in the United States alone and many activists say that the story of the passenger pigeon is a good starting point to introducing people to the conservation movement. Even though they may have went extinct, the passenger pigeon’s legacy lives on by helping other animals escape the same fate.

Bringing Them Back

A bit of a controversial movement has risen from the pigeon’s extinction as well, those who want to bring the feathered friends back to life. Scientists took DNA samples from pigeons preserved in museums to try and find other reasons as to why they might have went extinct, now that DNA could be used to bring them back. An organization called Revive & Restore co-founded by futurist Stewart Brand and genetics entrepreneur Ryan Phelan plan to use molecular biology to map the genome from the old samples and reproduce it. The organization hopes to save other animals that are currently endangered but the passenger pigeon is their flagship species.

Collection of taxidermy passenger pigeons. Courtesy of the Bailey Library and Archives.

The organization wants to use the band-tailed pigeon which is very similar to the passenger pigeon, the only real difference, besides genetics, between the two is that the band-tailed doesn’t live in huge flocks. They can’t extract an intact genome from taxidermied passenger pigeons but can gain enough of an idea to change the band tailed pigeons genome to match the passenger pigeons. First they have to map the genes, something that has never been done before. After that they must figure out if the birds were social from birth or if it was learned behavior, they are looking at the genomes of birds with similar social behavior to understand how much is learned and how much is genetic. 

Band-tailed pigeon. Courtesy of Macaulay Library.

Once the first two steps are done they will take a band-tailed pigeon genome, alter it, then inject this altered DNA into a live female pigeon’s eggs. Once the new “passenger pigeon” is born then it will mate with other passenger pigeons that have been born under the same circumstances. The new animal will not be a descendant of the former passenger pigeons but research consultant Ben Novak states that, “if I give it to a team of scientists who have no idea that it was bioengineered, and I say, ‘Classify this,’ if it looks and behaves like a passenger pigeon, the natural historians are going to say, ‘This is Ectopistes migratorius.’ And if the genome plops right next to all the other passenger pigeon genomes you’ve sequenced from history, then a geneticist will have to say, ‘This is a passenger pigeon. It’s not a band-tailed pigeon.’” Revive and Restore plans to start off with a small captive population that they can then breed, planning to reintroduce them to the wild in the 2030s. Novak says that initial research shows that North American forests can sustain the birds return. 

Others are more skeptical of these efforts however, many doubt that the birds could survive outside their enormous flocks and doubt that the forests could support such massive numbers. Many scientists believe that the ecosystem has moved on and found its new equilibrium without the birds, and reintroduction would only upset this new balance. 

Novak fired back at these claims though by saying that if the pigeon is as adaptable as it is believed they were then it would have no trouble adapting its population size to fit the new forests. Plus if the passenger pigeon is an “outbreak” species as many ornithologists have claimed then it can survive in smaller flocks. Ultimately the goal of Revive & Restore is to eventually bring back larger species, such as the woolly mammoth, that even though they may not be able to survive in the wild can survive in zoos which will bring in more people thus create more money for conservation efforts. Their website maintains that they will release the new pigeons between 2030 and 2040, but at the time of writing this article they do not give any explanation as to how far along in the process they are. 

Taxidermy passenger pigeon. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Personal Thoughts 

Though it is sad it is kind of amazing that in just 50 years us humans were able to cause a species numbering in the billions to go extinct. Makes me think a lot about the American Buffalo that was nearly hunted to extinction. Doing research for this did make me sad, seeing how people treated the poor animals. I love animals and I hate to see them hurt or abused. When it comes to bringing the pigeon back I say go for it, unlike some people I don’t see it as playing God and I think it is an interesting project. 

Sources 

Cover photo courtesy of Smith Bennet/Wikimedia Commons

https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct#

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/16/564597936/why-did-the-passenger-pigeon-go-extinct-the-answer-might-lie-in-their-toes

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/8/140831-passenger-pigeon-martha-deextinction-dna-animals-species/#close

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/passenger-pigeon

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-billion-to-zero-what-happened-to-the-passenger-pigeon/

https://definitions.uslegal.com/w/weeks-mclean-act/

https://reviverestore.org/about-the-passenger-pigeon/

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/vertebrate-zoology/birds/collections-overview/martha-last-passenger-pigeon