The Late Great Passenger Pigeon

A century, that’s how long it took for passenger pigeons, the most abundant bird in the world, numbering in the billions of individuals, to none anywhere. September 1 marked the centennial of the extinction of this magnificent bird, which has become the poster child of how humans can utterly devastate a species.

                  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.