Imagine yourself roaming a white oak woods in early 19th century Michigan. It’s a radiant, busy morning and the forest is alive with the sounds of spring. Suddenly, the sounds and sights begin to drown due to the presence of something loud, looming, and huge. The arch of the flock appears overhead. This flock consists of seemingly countless bright, medium sized birds – they are passenger pigeons. Now imagine that you watch this single flock flow across the sky for hours on end, marveling at the sheer quantity. This inconceivable image was once a reality here in North America, and 100 years ago to the year we lost our last link to that reality.

The passenger pigeon, or wild pigeon, was once found throughout most of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, where it was estimated to have maintained a population between 3 and 5 billion individuals. Numbers like that would have not only made it the most abundant bird species in North America, perhaps accounting for nearly 40% of all birds on the continent, but would have also probably made the passenger pigeon the most numerous bird on the planet.

The success of the pigeon can be attributed to their proficient flight, large nomadic flocks, and social aptitude. The massive flocks were supported by pristine tracts of deciduous forest that provided the mast necessary to sustain such great numbers; the most productive breeding area was the Great Lakes region. Nesting colonies stretched across hundreds of square miles, roosting in dense canopies that could withstand the weight. Passenger pigeons would move to areas of more open woods, depending on the season, to forage for beechnuts and acorns or a variety of berries later in the summer months. Adults constructed loosely designed nests and produced just one young possibly twice a season.

As settlement in the East began to take hold, mixed hardwood forests were cleared and inevitably had an effect on the movement and behavior of the pigeons. As foraging grounds diminished, some pigeon colonies resorted to feeding in the more widespread grain fields in order to supplement their natural food source – you might guess what the popular response was. Retaliation of early settlers and farmers involved the targeting and shooting of the birds, and although it isn’t believed to have made much of an impact on the population, it did largely commence the use of passenger pigeons as a food source of Americans.



The same qualities that promoted the success of the species contributed to the easy exploitation of it. The dense flocks and communal behavior made for easy targets by hunters and trappers. It can be noted that Native Americans are known to have had a relationship with the passenger pigeon as a part of their diet, often seizing the young of from a nest, which the monogamous parents were believed to replace. The 1800’s really marked the beginning of large scale pigeon harvesting. It was not uncommon to fire into a low flying crowd of birds on a windy day and bring down several of them with a single shot. Netting was also common practice, often done by luring pigeons closer with bait and decoys – hence the term “stool pigeon”. The easily acquirable meat came at a cheap price from commercial hunters and soon became a staple in many low class colonies in and around the large cities out back East.

Extension and connection of railroads in the 1850’s fueled the pigeon slaughter – allowing hunters to ship much larger harvests with ease. In 1851, the town of Pittsburg was reported to have shipped 1.8 million pigeons to larger cities in the East. By 1860 it was apparent to some that the once endless flocks were beginning to appear not so endless, but with no laws or regulations on hunting, the mass killing continued. Petoskey, Michigan, set the stage for one of the final great nesting sites for the passenger pigeon, where in 1871 it was recorded that an average of 50,000 birds were killed per day for several months straight.

In the 1890’s there were no longer deafening flocks of pigeons blacking out the sky. Michigan proposed a bill in 1897 that would ban the hunting of passenger pigeons, but the damage was irreversible. Some of the last reported birds in the wild reported in Ohio around 1900, followed by the death of the last captive specimen, known as Martha, at the Cincinnati zoo in 1914. In less than half of a century, perhaps the most abundant bird species on the planet was erased and transformed into a distant memory.

One thing that is not hard to imagine when reflecting on this extinction, is the effect that a large and extensive bird like the passenger pigeon had on its respective ecosystem – along with the sequential ramifications following their disappearance. The legendary massive roosting sites, sometimes holding hundreds of thousands of the birds, had a huge impact on the forests they used. It was said that at a roosting site, dung could easily accumulate to over a foot deep on the forest floor. This doubtlessly played a role in soil dynamics here, forest fire frequency, and also seed dispersal of white oaks, the acorns being a staple in the spring diet of pigeons. It can be noted, however, that out of this textbook model of overhunting and habitat destruction, came a heightened level of species and land conservation awareness.

Historical content aside, I recently read an article that stated “Understanding the relationship between guns and conservation is as important as understanding the relationship between passenger pigeons and beechnuts.” The conservation awareness and practices beyond the extinction of the passenger pigeon are largely due to rich hunters who could fund the purchase of protected wildlife areas, the likes of Boone and Crocket Club, but I have a hard time dismissing science in order to graciously stand behind conservation for exploitation. Understanding what the beechnut meant to the passenger pigeon is a great look into the ecology of an extremely unique species that flourished by raw numbers and pristine habitat; even if we had halted the slaughter, the pigeon was doomed solely due to forest clearing for farming… that is a relationship that I stress understanding. Understanding what a gun is to conservation is basically identifying how people didn’t recognize the value of a healthy natural habitat or basic ecological concepts yet, they only saw value in what game animals it produced. It also highlights this use of the word conservation when it applies to protecting a natural feature specifically to exploit it in some way – which might be better than nothing, but at what cost.

I wanted to review the story of the passenger pigeon not only because of this year’s anniversary, but also because it startles me how many people I talk to from time to time that have no clue what a passenger pigeon even was. This wasn’t some ancient natural occurrence in some far away land; it happened right here and just generations ago. The most important issues to touch on when discussing this matter may be the parallels it holds with the current state of conservation and how we view it.

“One foggy day in October 1884, at 5 a.m. I looked out of my bedroom window, and as I looked six wild pigeons flew down and perched on the dead branches of a tall poplar tree that stood about one hundred feet away. As I gazed at them in delight, feeling as though old friends had come back, they quickly darted away and disappeared in the fog, the last I ever saw of any of these birds in this vicinity.”

— Charles Dury, naturalist, 1910