The Martyrdom of Martha

The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon

Sources:

Paradise Found, Nature in America at the Time of Discovery by Steve Nicholls: The University of Chicago Press 2009

A Feathered River Across the Sky The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction by Joel Greenberg: Bloomsbury 2014

Before we humans swarmed the world in our billions, other creatures took our place in the billions too. Human population reached a billion perhaps, sometime in the 19th century. But, at some point in the early 19th century, there would have been billions more of the most prolific bird history has recorded from North America, the Passenger pigeon. It may have been the most numerous terrestrial vertebrate to inhabit the earth, before we beat it down, replacing it with ourselves, rats and chickens instead. No wild bird can now compete in numbers with the once numerous passenger pigeons. They were a phenomenon. But their extinction was not inevitable. At every chance to save them, there was insufficient or insignificant action. So many more species have now joined them in being extirpated while our species seems to balloon out of control. Before man’s unbridled domination, nature reigned supreme in a world barely imaginable in the abundances of buffalos, birds, turtles, fish in unending forests, praries and virgin nature encountered and recorded by explorers. This is a summary of the execution of that poignant pigeon whose legacy lives on.

Wildlife has decreased by over a half according to a recent WWF report compared to the 1970s. The human population meanwhile has more than doubled. Steve Nicholls contemplates the state of nature a century ago, two centuries ago or five centuries ago. It is not the major extinctions of the Great Auk or Thylacine that would surprise the hypothetical time traveller but rather the decline in wildlife abundances. Our assessments would be compromised by changing baseline syndrome: we assume that observed environment represents a normal state of affairs making comparisons only across a few decades, yet possessing no comprehension of what a given environment actually sustained in the past.

North America moved from the Stone Age to an industrialised one across five centuries. The records of the expanding West yields copious material to try and grasp the dramatic transformations that did take place in a now expanding literature of environmental history. In New England Prospect 1633, Englishman William Wood provided a snapshot of wilderness there that bested Henry David Thoreau’s observations from his classic Walden from the 1850s as Thoreau himself noted. Sixteenth century North America was no virgin Eden, but a complex landscape that had itself been transformed and moderated by Native Americans. The arrival of Europeans was the ignition of a short chronological fuse heralding environmental impacts of seismic proportions.

In 1875 Albert Child recorded the greatest swarm of insects ever witnessed, and measured a cloud of Rocky Mountain locusts, trillions strong, covering an area of 198,000 square miles; over twice the size of Great Britain. The locust was confirmed extinct only in the 21st century. The fates of three species of bird that utilised the eastern forests of North America lend poignancy to the transformation that took place: the Carolina parakeet, Ivory billed woodpecker and the Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius).

2014 Marked the centenary of the Great War (The first world war) but also the extinction of the Passenger pigeon, one of only a few, timed historical extinctions recorded at 1PM September 1st 1914 when Martha, last of her kind was found dead at Cincinnati zoo. It would indeed be a pity if we only resurrect a memory of this vanished species during a commemoration of its extinction considering that the dodo, also an extinct pigeon is better known than its northern relative. The Carolina parakeet from the southeastern states was largely extinct by 1918 but may have lingered on into the 1940s. The Ivory billed woodpecker may plausibly still haunt Arkansas swampland. But as Nicholls states, there is little doubt of the extinction of the pigeon. Greenberg’s documentation of a more “spectacular and horrific” extinction than several others in the light of Nicholls’ wider canvas is no mere timely reminder, given that extinctions today are practically daily occurrences despite derisory news coverage.

Many I talked to had not even heard of the Passenger pigeon. Once it was the most populous bird in North America and also perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. As Greenberg notes dovetailing his work to Nicholls’ history “The new continent possessed fecundity beyond what they [Europeans] had ever seen, and the pigeons manifested the pullulation of life to the ultimate degree.”

This was a bird woven into the fabric of American history for 380 years. Anthony Phillip Henrich composed The Columbiad, first performed in Prague around 1858, a symphonic celebration of the species while it was very much alive — a unique musical tribute to an extinct species, though it wasn’t alone. There were songs, poems and novels inspired by the bird, mostly after its extinction. Over one hundred place names such as Pigeon Forge TN and scores of colloquial botanical names, e.g. pigeon cherry mark physical associations. No other extinct species was remarked upon for so long from its first Western record in 1534 by Jacques Cartier, sixty four years before the discovery of the dodo. Britain’s The Penny Magazine 1833, quoted Alexander Wilson in providing headline international coverage, that often drew the attention of explorers to America. Leaving aside naturalists, the bird did receive attention from Charles Dickens (he was offered some at a New York banquet in 1842), Thoreau, Longfellow, Roosevelt and Henry Ford among others.

William Butts Mershon created the first major account of the species in 1907 summarising key sources, history and his observations, but no work will probably surpass Arlie William Schorger’s The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction (1955) distilled from over ten thousand sources to produce the veritable bible for the bird.

Much about the Passenger pigeon shall remain unknown. Like the dodo, it belonged to a monotypic genus (a unique type of bird) with no close relatives and possessed unique attributes with appreciable ecological impact. It was one of the fastest pigeons, clocking up to 60 MPH, feeding primarily on tree mast — acorns, chestnuts, beechnuts but also fruits, berries and grains “burning them in a traveling blast of life”, in the words of Aldo Leopold. Their kinetic jaws would enable them to swallow improbably large seeds in feeding frenzies, swallowing up to ¼ pint of food; shot birds sometimes fell with a rattle. They also swallowed small pebbles as grit to help digestion and these worn gizzard stones provide subfossil evidence of their ancient presence. They were prolific and gregarious breeders. Pairs courted and built nests with a single egg (often reported as two) within four days. Eggs were incubated in turn by both sexes that fed the squabs on rich pigeon milk. After about a month the chicks were abandoned to follow their parents.

For Eastern Native Americans, only the Wild turkey was more important as a feathered comestible. Native Americans generally avoided harming adults during nestings, but the squabs were valued as sources of pigeon butter, stored for winter use. The Seneca Indians still remember the bird in pigeon dances — they enjoyed roast potatoes with pigeon butter.

Europeans were not slow to record their number and impact. Ralphe Hamor noted in 1615 “wild Pigeons (in winter beyond number or imagination, my selfe have seene three or four hours together flockes in the aire, so thicke that even they have shadowed the skie from us”. In the 1620s they were the commonest bird in Manhattan. They were seen to form flying rivers by Alexander Wilson “the whole, with its glittery undulations, marked a space on the face of the heavens resembling the windings of a vast and majestic river”, or Chief Pokagon “like some great river, ever varying in hue … sweeping on at sixty miles an hour” or by Philip Hone “their undulation was like the long waves of the ocean in a calm, and the fluttering of their wings made a noise like the crackling of a fire among dry leaves”. Wilson, John James Audubon and Pokagon furnish accounts that represent Passenger pigeon canon. Others such as Margaret Fuller observed in 1843 their movement in clouds “with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew.”

Major W. Ross King from Fort Mississauga, Ontario, 1860, provided details that resulted in the most astonishing size for a flock witnessed that “could not have been less than three hundred miles in length, with an average breadth, … of one mile”; this description led Schorger to conclude a flock size of 3.7 billion birds. As Alexander Wilson summarised (reproduced in The Penny magazine) “But the most remarkable characteristic of these birds is their associating together, both in their migrations, and also during the period of incubation, in such prodigious numbers, as almost to surpass belief; and which has no parallel among any other of the feathered tribes on the face of the earth, with which all naturalists are acquainted.”

Such numbers were sufficient to break branches and lay waste forests while at the same time, richly fertilizing the soil. A local newspaper described the Petoskey, Michigan nesting in 1871: “The indescribable cooing roar produced by uncounted millions of pigeons, … arose from every side” and from another account “On every hand the eye would meet these graceful creatures of the forest, which, in their delicate robes of blue, purple, and brown, darted hither and thither.”

From the time that Europeans started colonising, the pigeon was hunted, largely for food or recreationally. They were generally safe only in the sky, beyond the range of weaponry. Samuel de Champlain notes from 1605: “… countless numbers of pigeons, whereof we take a goodly quantity.” The quantities kept increasing with rising population and observers noted decreases in flock sizes. They were a resource during food shortages representing a literal windfall to starving settlers turning eventually into a dietary mainstay; furthermore pigeon fat was used as shortening or soap making and the birds fed dogs and pigs or were even ploughed as fertilizer. Their feathers were used in bedding and body parts were used medicinally. What began as a localised commodity turned into a highly organised industry, especially after the American Civil War when increasing railroads and telegraphy could lure professional hunters in myriads with a resulting interstate export of millions of pigeons, typically in sealed barrels.

There were exceptional examples of sympathy towards the birds. James Fenimore Cooper, novelist in 1823 was one of the first to attempt to prick American environmental conscience based on the pigeon. Junius Brutus Booth, father of the infamous John Wilkes Booth staged a funeral for a bushel of hunted passenger pigeons lamenting “they’re innocent victims of man’s barbarity. I wish to testify, in some public way, against this wanton destruction of life.” In 1884, when the birds were facing extinction, 300 birds were seen to gather in Potter County, Pennsylvania. The six observers decided to keep it secret, allowing the birds to exceptionally nest in peace.

The consensus was that the pigeon could not be extirpated by widespread hunting. As Audubon put it (overestimating their reproductive output): “Persons unacquainted with these birds might naturally conclude that such dreadful havoc would soon put an end to the species. But I have satisfied myself, by long observation, that nothing but the gradual diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease, as they … quadruple their numbers yearly, and always at least double it.” Gene Stratton-Porter, American novelist wrote “that such a thing could happen in our own day as that the last of these beautiful birds might be exterminated, no one seriously dreamed.” The 1857 Ohio Senate looked into protecting the bird but concluded “The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, travelling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here to-day, and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced.” Long before the pigeoners themselves knew the game was up it was French witness to the slaughter in 1840s Kentucky, Benedict Henry Revoil who boldly wagered that the bird would disappear within a century; an event that took place in half that time.

Greenberg states that when it came to ingenuity in killing “we are no slackers even when the adversary is an eighteen-inch-long bird.” The arrival of birds was greeted with awe. In 1855 “As the watchers stared, the [pigeon] hum increased to a mighty throbbing. Now everyone was out of the houses and stores, looking apprehensively at the growing cloud … Children screamed and ran for home. … Horses bolted. Suddenly a great cry arose … ‘It’s the passenger pigeons! It’s the pigeons!’ ” Euphoria attended shooting sprees over the cities of New York, Philadelphia or Toronto. This cry would have been repeated again and again. Initially, with such numbers it was a simple matter to kill large numbers in a short time. Etta Wilson’s father aimed to a kill a thousand pigeons before breakfast and she picked up the shot birds “wild frightened red eyes and with one or both wings or legs broken or shot off, while its little heart beat in rapid tempo against [my] palms.”

Schorger claimed that shooting destroyed more birds than several available methods though pigeon netting was a more concentrated attack. A single shot often brought down a windfall, 132 was claimed in 1662 with another claim of 99. Pigeon netting as generally employed was the launch of a large net over a gathered flock like a giant mousetrap. Flocks were lured onto beds baited with grain or even salt, often with the expedient of using decoys such as the original stool pigeons. These were tied and made to hover over a bed in such away as to convince passing birds that the decoy was about to land to feed. A single net could catch up to 5000 birds though 1000 was more common. The pigeoners had to work fast to slaughter the birds before net resetting, typically by using metal pincers to break necks, though some used their mouth. “When all were dead, the net was raised, many still clinging to its meshes, with beak and claws in their death grip and were shaken off.” Pigeon nestings were also attacked for the fatty squabs that were extremely popular. They were collected after their heads were shot off, or were knocked off nests using blunt projectiles. During nestings, mortality was exacerbated: “Many of the young pigeons were dead in their nests, the mothers probably having been killed, and her young starved.”

By the 1880s, recreational pigeon hunting had given way to trap shoots, a prelude to modern clay pigeon shooting with live targets. Trap shooting began in Europe and rock pigeons, especially bred were the victims of choice. In America, passenger pigeons were cheaper. Live pigeons were netted and bundled into pot bellied baskets, later shipped long distances under terrible circumstances. The birds were delivered to the tournaments that became frenzied and profitable affairs with betting as to who’d kill the most pigeons. The birds were released from traps more or less like missiles before they could with any luck get airborne. In 1880, up to April a magazine recorded the slaughter of nearly 45,000 birds out of 63,000 released, 71% mortality. New York state sported the largest tournaments — one in Syracuse in 1877 destroyed 20,000 birds. A one time Champion shooter in the 1880s aimed to shoot 500 birds within ten hours, allowing lags to load the gun himself. He succeeded in 8 hours killing 75 birds in one streak. Trap shooting was eventually outlawed by the efforts of Henry Bergh who founded the ASPCA in 1866.

As pigeon numbers decreased, they appeared to concentrate further in immense nestings, belying their population declines. Schorger unearthed the largest on the basis of available records from 1871 covering a staggering 850 square miles, much larger than Greater London in west-central Wisconsin. Pigeons began to gather from April and news was soon out. One hundred thousand people were drawn, mostly to attend what amounted to a gory supermarket sweep. By May the nesting had disbanded. Schorger estimated that 136 million birds nested, amounting to most of the passenger pigeons then alive, less than 10% of the numbers observed by Ross. During the Petoskey nesting in 1878, historically thought of as one of the largest, dead pigeons were so common that “The wings and feathers from the packing-houses were used by the wagon load to fill up the mud holes in the road for miles out of town.” It was at this time that there were concerted efforts to mitigate the slaughter by a few concerned individuals, but to little avail. In a nesting at Benzie County, Michigan in 1880, the trees were set on fire. Greenberg notes that the decade from the 1870’s to the 1880’s makes the extinction inevitable. Around 13 large nestings were recorded with diminishing returns. By this time there were several companies dealing with pigeon slaughter and distribution, but trade was unprofitable by 1884. By 1888 ornithologists feared the bird’s extinction and around 1893, the last pigeons were sold at market in St Louis.

The last wild confirmed nesting took place June 21st 1895 when a male, a nest and egg were collected. The last wild bird shot was thought to have been in March 24th 1900, Pike County Ohio by Schorger though Greenberg unearths related records. His spadework reveals that the last unequivocal wild passenger pigeon was killed on April 3rd 1902 near Laurel, Indiana. Subsequent records of wild birds such as observed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 persisted but remain dubious. Rewards were offered of up to $1000 for the live recovery of nesting birds as ornithologists strove to revive the species but the prize was never claimed. Most passenger pigeons then remaining were captive.

Conservation was of little priority for Charles Otis Whitman, a noted evolutionary biologist who maintained a small flock of Passenger pigeons around 1900. Most photos of the bird came from his collection, though Greenberg also makes explicit just three surviving photos of wilder birds, either dead or as stool pigeons in the hands of pigeon netters. The last captive colony was at Cincinnati Zoo. In the end there were just two birds. George died July 10th 1910 and Martha clung on, perhaps aged up to 29 years to be preserved for posterity in 1914.

The precipitous decline of the pigeon took place over 3 centuries and there remains simmering speculation on the technicalities of exactly what caused the extinction between outright slaughter, habitat destruction or even disease. As far as Schorger was concerned “All thinking people now realize that man alone was responsible for the extinction of the passenger pigeon so that further discussion … is unnecessary.” James Fisher and Roger Tory Peterson did not dispute this and Greenberg agrees. He quotes colleague David Mrazek “You could say we happened to the pigeon”. From the 1860s onwards, the bird went from billions strong to none in 40 years. The so called Allee effect by which species fitness improves in large numbers may have been seriously compromised by hunting. The importance of this effect remains doubtful given the bird was observed to nest in smaller numbers on a quieter scale.

Modern ornithologists like Oliver Austin have concluded that the extinction was inevitable, given the species’ aggregations, smacking as a sort of clichéd dinosaurian stupidity. If this is true, then several species today from big cats to rhinos or Bluefin tuna are equally unfit being too stupid or even too tasty for survival, and only a few, more adaptable if uninteresting generalists such as rats or common mynahs may withstand our native aggression. The Passenger pigeon however was at times a sensitive pet; they responded to kindness and did breed in captivity. Several extinctions that were then seen as inevitable, such as with the American bison were mercifully reversed. At a time when there are just six northern white rhinos or only 50 Vaquita porpoises among others on the brink, the pigeon remains a symbol of unbridled carnage on land and increasingly the sea. An extinction event comparable to certain wars, genocides or much vaunted disasters like the Titanic. A well referenced if non-exhaustive indictment such as Greenberg’s should ideally supply the species with renewed cultural as well as historical commemoration.