Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)  

The passenger pigeon was once one of the most abundant birds in North America. Flocks could be seen during migration that took several days to pass overhead, almost 300 miles long and containing up to 1 billion birds. They traveled and lived in enormous groups and could be found almost anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains, where the birds depended on the deciduous forests for their food and shelter. They were described as being one of the most amazing spectacles in the natural world.

The extinction of the passenger pigeon was due primarily to hunting on a commercial scale. Pigeon meat was cheap and easy to come by, and was sent by the trainload from the hunting grounds to the east coast to be sold. In New York City in 1805, a pair of pigeons cost 2 cents. In 1878, a single hunter sent 3 million pigeons to market in a just one year. However, by the 1850’s, people began to notice that there were fewer pigeons to be found. But the demand for pigeon meat was still high and the hunting continued without regulation.

Another factor leading to their extinction was habitat loss. Passenger pigeons depended on the acorns and other seeds from the large old-growth forests that were once found across the eastern half of the U.S. As America’s human population grew and expanded, forests were cut down at the same time that demand for meat was increasing.

In 1857, a bill was brought forth to the Ohio State Legislature seeking protection for the passenger pigeon. A Select Committee of the Senate filed a report stating “The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced” (Hornaday, W.T. 1913: Our Vanishing Wild Life. Its Extermination and Preservation)

Only 50 years after that proposal, passenger pigeons were nowhere to be found. The last passenger pigeon in captivity, named Martha, died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.