Their
name comes from their French name pigeon de passage meaning “migratory pigeon”.
They were also referred to as the wild pigeon or Ectopistes migratorius as they
are scientifically named. They represented 20 to 40 percent of all North
American birds.
When
a flock flew over they literally darkened the sky while their droppings rained
down on everything below. They ranged from the Atlantic Ocean as far west as
Texas, Montana and southern Alberta. They wintered in the gulf states and their
principal nesting area was in the Great Lakes and New England. Pigeon roosts
ranged from 48 to 1280 square kilometers. Typically they laid one egg per year.
Their dung accumulated up to 30 centimeters deep.
Passenger
pigeons ate acorns, chestnuts, beech nuts, blueberries, cherries, cranberries,
currants, gooseberries, grapes, juneberries, mountain ash, mulberries,
raspberries and strawberries. They helped disperse the seeds of these plants. Massasauga
rattlesnakes, peregrine falcons, wolves, bobcats, foxes, bears, cougars, eagles
and Cooper’s hawks (also known as the “great pigeon hawk” for its success in
capturing passenger pigeons) all preyed on the birds.
Passenger
pigeons, by eating acorns, helped keep down the deer mice population, a major
source of Lyme disease. With their extinction deer mice and thus Lyme disease
substantially increase. It is also believed that plants and animals, such as
the sand cherry, peregrine falcon, massasauga rattlesnake and the American
burying beetle all declined as a result of the passenger pigeon’s extinction.
Passenger
pigeons began noticeably disappearing in the 1840s from Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick and Maine and by the 1870s in Ontario and the Great Lakes states. A
combination of deforestation and overhunting were the causes. For example a
professional hunter in Michigan frequently killed 70 pigeons at one shot in the
spring when the birds were migrating and he seldom came to breakfast before he
killed 1,000 – 1,200 birds. The last known flock of passenger pigeons,
numbering about 250,000, attempted to nest in April, 1896 outside of Bowling
Green, Ohio. About 245,000 of them were killed by hunters for sport. Their
carcases were dumped in a deep ravine near the train station as a derailment
delayed their shipping to market. The last known wild pigeon was shot in 1900
in Ohio.
Despite
this the bird nearly survived. There were a few small captive breeding flocks
and the birds did breed and produced eggs. Unfortunately inbreeding prevented
the captive flocks from succeeding and one by one the birds died until Martha,
a 29 year old bird, died September 1, 1914 and with her went the species.
However,
that may not be the end. Lately there has been talk of bringing back the
passenger pigeon from the dead. There are two ways of doing it: breeding and
DNA. The first involves creating a look-alike bird through breeding traits
similar to the passenger pigeon. The resulting birds would not be 100%
authentic, but close enough to be acceptable. DNA from mounted birds has been
collected and sequencing it is being done. The next step would be to put
passenger pigeon DNA into an egg of an acceptable host. This would be 100%
authentic.
There
are pros and cons to bringing back the bird. On the negative side concerns are
raised that recreating extinct species would take away from efforts to preserve
what we currently have and are in danger of losing. Another concern is that
there may be untended consequences in bringing back the passenger pigeon on an
eco-system that has recovered from their extinction.
Others
counter that bringing back the bird would not necessarily detract from efforts
aimed at saving existing species from extinction. It would also not be like
bringing back dinosaurs and would correct a wrong. It would solve problems
created by their extinction. I tend to be in this camp. Hopefully one day
passenger pigeons can once again grace the skies over North America, although
probably not in the numbers they once did.
Sorry for the much delayed post, but in typical ADHD fashion I got distracted.
