A Feathered River Across the Sky Read online

  To those who recorded what they saw; to those who collected the words; and to those whose love of beauty and life strive to make this story less likely to be repeated.

  And to three others: Cindy Kerchmar, for enabling me to do this, and Renee and David Baade, whose support over the years has been extraordinary and deeply appreciated.

  “Now, I’m sewing into the material

  my red heart because the dead lately

  have been a little noisy in my sleep …”

  —Tom Crawford, “Prayer,” The Names of Birds (2011)

  Contents

  Preface

  1. Life of the Wanderer

  2. My Blood Shall Be Your Blood: Indians and Passenger Pigeons

  3. A Legacy of Awe

  4. Pigeons as Provisions to Pigeons as Products

  5. Means of Destruction

  6. Profiles in Killing

  7. The Tempest Was Spent: The Last Great Nestings

  8. Flights to the Finish

  9. Martha and Her Kin: The Captive Flocks

  10. Extinction and Beyond

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix: A Passenger Pigeon Miscellany

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Plates Section

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Preface

  My first recollection of reading about the extinct passenger pigeon was when I was in fourth grade at College Hill Elementary School in Skokie, Illinois. I checked out T. Gilbert Pearson’s Birds of America and became so mesmerized I studied it relentlessly until the two-week period elapsed, after which I renewed it three consecutive times. Eventually, Mrs. Kelly, the librarian, encouraged me to sample other works that might interest me, including the Newbery Medal winner Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon, about an individual Columba livia that flew messages on behalf of Allied troops in World War I. Although the story of the passenger pigeon crossed my consciousness while absorbing Edward Howe Forbush’s account in Pearson, it became firmly lodged there in 1966 when I started birding as a twelve-year-old.

  A year or two later my supportive parents responded to my request by giving me a hard-cover edition of A. W. Schorger’s authoritative The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction. Schorger was one of the country’s premier historians of natural history. He spent forty years collecting thousands of sources related to passenger pigeons, starting his research at a period early enough when it was still possible to interview people who had known the living bird.

  The pigeons not only affected the ecosystems of which they were undoubtedly a keystone species, but also the consciousness of the people who saw them. Accounts survive attesting to the presence of the pigeon hordes over every major city of Canada and the United States, from the Atlantic coast to the Missouri River. They were part of the cultural and economic development of these two nations. As passenger pigeon historian John French wrote, they were martyrs to our progress. So this really is a story of people as much as birds.

  Indeed, the interaction between these two species is yet another element that makes the story of the passenger pigeon unlike any other. As late as 1860, one flight near Toronto likely exceeded one billion birds and maybe three billion. Forty years later the species was almost extinct, and by late afternoon on September 1, 1914, it was completely extinct when Martha, the last of her species, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Human beings destroyed passenger pigeons almost every time they encountered them, and they used every imaginable device in the process. Unrelenting carnage reduced the population to the point where it began its inexorable spiral to obliteration. Whether a concerted effort could have reversed the decline and altered the outcome was a question asked far too late for any attempt to have even been tried.

  I think that if an attempt had been mounted early enough to gather a sufficiently large and diverse group of breeding stock, they could almost certainly have survived, even if gone from the wild, because the bird bred readily in captivity. If a wild reproducing population had somehow survived a few more decades, it could have been protected by the strict conservation measures enacted in the 1930s—and based on scientific management, the species might still be with us, albeit in numbers much lower than billions. Modern Americans and Canadians coexist with cranes, waterfowl, and blackbirds that move across the landscape in flocks of many thousands or even millions, so why not passenger pigeons?

  It is unusual when the exact date of an extinction is known with a strong degree of certainty. That the hundredth anniversary of Martha’s death was fast approaching provided an impetus in my wanting to mark this event. It led to the writing of this book and a broader hope that this centenary could be a vehicle for informing the public about the bird and the importance that its story has to current conservation issues. In my research, I learned that others had the same idea, particularly ornithologist and pigeon scholar David Blockstein. We talked and began reaching out to other people and institutions. Among the first organizations I contacted were the Ohio Historical Society (which has on display the stuffed Buttons, one of the last known wild passenger pigeons), the Cincinnati Zoo (where Martha lived most of her life and died), and the Chicago Academy of Science’s Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. This eventually led to a series of conference calls involving an ever-expanding group of participants, and then Notebaert graciously hosted a meeting in February 2011 that drew about twenty organizations from across the eastern half of the country. Several others participated via conference calling. Project Passenger Pigeon emerged from that gathering, and as of September 2012, over 150 institutions were involved. Our goal is to use the centenary as a teaching moment to inform people about the passenger pigeon story and then to use that story as a portal into consideration of current issues related to extinction, sustainability, and the relationship between people and nature. It is hoped that this tragic extinction continues to engage people and to act as a cautionary tale so that it is not repeated.

  Chapter 1

  Life of the Wanderer

  I have wandered through this land, just doing the best I can … And I can’t help but wonder where I’m bound, where I’m bound, And I can’t help but wonder where I’m bound.

  —TOM PAXTON, “I CAN’T HELP BUT WONDER WHERE I’M BOUND,” 1964

  Nothing in the human record suggests that there was ever another bird like the passenger pigeon. At the time that Europeans first arrived in North America, passenger pigeons likely numbered anywhere from three to five billion. It was the most abundant bird on the continent, if not the planet, and may well have comprised 25 to 40 percent of North America’s bird life. When the flocks moved for migration or foraging, the earth below would be darkened by shadows for hours: famed naturalist John James Audubon recorded a pigeon flight along the Ohio River that eclipsed the sun for three days.

  Only the firmament itself could absorb the legions of pigeons without being marked. When the birds descended to nest, feed, or roost, hundreds of millions of birds would sprawl across the landscape. The largest nesting on record took up 850 square miles. The birds congregated in numbers large enough to literally destroy the trees on which they gathered. Whether a site offered stately old oaks or scrubby willows, observers described the devastation as similar to that of tornadoes or hurricanes.

  A passenger pigeon looked like a mourning dove on steroids: at fifteen to eighteen inches in length and ten to twelve ounces in weight, the pigeon was one and a half times the size of the dove. (Of all the billions of passenger pigeons killed at the hand of modern humans, only a tiny number of fresh specimens were ever weighed, and the results recorded and published.) The male pigeon possessed slaty-blue and gray upper parts and a throat and brea
st of rich copper glazed with purple, while the female was a much drabber version throughout, with beige replacing copper. The Reverend E. C. Dixon witnessed one of the last large nestings in Wisconsin in 1882 and said it was a bird of “transcendent beauty. The male clad in a suit of gleaming iridescent, all but opalescent feathers … There was a sheen and brilliance far beyond mere simple color most birds display.”

  The range of the passenger pigeon in North America. Solid line encloses area of normal distribution while dotted line depicts area where the species usually nested in greatest abundance. © Gary Antonetti/Ortelius Design, based on a map in A. W. Schorger, The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction

  Wallace Craig, who studied members of a captive flock, wrote that the “voice and gesture” of the passenger pigeon was as different from that of other pigeons as it was in its manner of flocking and migration. He described the voice as “shrieks and chatters and clucks instead of cooing,” although some observers did say that the species gave forth “coos.” A very different impression of the bird’s vocalization was conveyed by the New York minister who acknowledged that the pigeon had no song save for “a number of low notes, some of which are sounds that seem to be almost the soft breathing of the great trees.”1

  NOW HERE, NOW THERE: MIGRATION AND FORAGING FLIGHTS

  Few North American birds could match the aerial mastery of the passenger pigeon. One of the few scientists who studied live passenger pigeons wrote of the species: “It was eminently a bird of flight,” with a body that was “majestic, muscular, and trim.” A life on the wing required specific adaptations to survive the grueling challenges. Connected to the deep keel of its breastbone, massive muscles powered the elongated wings, which beat the air like oars in the sea. Downward strokes kept the birds aloft while the slight turning on the upswing propelled the birds forward. Speed and agility marked this species in animation. John James Audubon said a lone passenger pigeon streaking through the forest “passes like a thought.” He could never have guessed how prophetic that image would be.2

  Passenger pigeons required speed and endurance, for they were nomads, ever searching for the forage that could best sustain their masses. Their movements were driven less by seasonal changes than this need for food. Although they generally headed north in spring and south in fall, for that reflects the continental pattern of greatest food availability, in some years members of the species lingered into December within sight of Hudson Bay. In April 1832 a nesting colony occupied thirty square miles of river bottom north of Columbus, Mississippi; and on January 1, 1876, a flock of many thousands of birds passed over Garrett County, Maryland.3

  The editor of a hunting journal commented in 1913 on the wayfaring proclivities of the passenger pigeon: “The pigeon hosts were now here, now there; they were pilgrims and strangers, the gypsies of birdom.” These pigeons were birds of passage, and their common name reflects this. But the point is made explicit in the redundancy of their scientific name. The genus Ectopistes is based on a Greek word for “wanderer,” and the species migratorius is Latin for “one that migrates.” This trait led the Narragansett of New England to call the pigeon wushko’wh‘an, or the wanderer.4

  Though striking as individuals, passenger pigeons most differed from other species in the size of their flocks and colonies. The flocks would take on every imaginable configuration. If a group of birds approached an obstruction, such as a hill, they might split in two and rejoin when the obstacle had been passed. Two oft-mentioned shapes were of long lines of birds, but in one they would have “narrow fronts” and in the other “broad fronts,” up to forty birds deep. It was thought that the former was more common during shorter foraging flights, while the latter was more frequently adopted during migration. One possible explanation is that when the birds were covering extensive territory, a broad front better enabled them to assess the landscape for food, especially given their keen vision. When the birds were flying from established roosting or nesting sites to known locations of food, the slimmer flocks, generally comprising fewer birds, would be a quicker way of reaching the destination. But often the flocks would morph from one shape into another or into giant masses beyond precise categorization.5

  When attacked by a hawk, the rivers of moving birds would drop to avoid the predator, but the notch in the line would continue long after the threat had ceased. Alexander Wilson surmised that after a while the inefficiencies of deep undulations in the thick cord of birds would dawn upon the members, who would “suddenly change their direction so that what was in column before, became an immense front, straightening all of its indentures.” Perhaps there was no reason for the transfigurations at all, save for sheer caprice born of being part of a living multitude that dwarfed all else with which it shared the skies.6

  The individual birds were packed into these immense flocks, seemingly with only enough space on either side to accommodate the pumping of their wings. Such rapidity of motion by each member makes the unbroken torsion of the throng just one more thing about this species that defies understanding: “The flight was very rapid and exceedingly graceful. While direction was held each bird appeared a law unto itself, swaying and twisting and veering, yet never colliding with one of its fellows.” But as with most aspects of this bird, one can almost always find an exception. While traveling through Canada in the first few years of the nineteenth century, George Heriot reported that “when two columns, moving in opposite directions at the same height in the atmosphere, encounter each other, many of them fall to the ground, stunned by the rude shock communicated by this sudden collision.”7

  How fast these birds flew during migration can never be known with certainty, but based on a variety of evidence, some better than others, commentators from Alexander Wilson (1812) to A. W. Schorger (1955) accepted the speed of sixty miles per hour. Mourning doves have been clocked at forty-five to fifty-five miles an hour. Recently published genetic work reveals that pigeons in the genus Patagioenas are the closest living relatives to passenger pigeons. A member of that group, the band-tailed pigeon of western North America, has been timed at 45 mph on leisurely flights, and a pre-migratory group exceeded the speed of a car traveling 70 mph.8

  As the migrating pigeons reached their breeding or roosting destinations, or during foraging forays, they descended much closer to earth. One observer from Ontario tells of how the pigeons in their hurried flights just above the ground seemed to aim for him, but veered at the last moment: “It would almost seem sometimes as if they just tried to see how near they could come and get away successfully.”9

  One of the largest flights of passenger pigeons ever described in detail occurred at Fort Mississauga, Ontario, in May of what was probably 1860. Major W. Ross King was an English hunter and naturalist who spent three years traveling through Canada in pursuit of its “picturesque solitudes” and the wildlife that thrived within those prairies, forests, and waters so thinly settled by humans.10 He had hoped to see one of those vast movements of passenger pigeons about which he had read so much, and he was not to be disappointed:

  Early in the morning I was apprised by my servant that an extraordinary flock of birds was passing over, such as he had never seen before. Hurrying out and ascending the grassy ramparts, I was perfectly amazed to behold the air filled, the sun obscured by millions of pigeons, not hovering about but darting onwards in a straight line with arrowy flight, in a vast mass a mile or more in breadth, and stretching before and behind as far as the eye could reach.

  Swiftly and steadily the column passed over with a rushing sound, and for hours continued in undiminished myriads advancing over the American forests in the eastern horizon, as the myriads that had passed were lost in the western sky.

  It was late in the afternoon before any decrease in the mass was perceptible, but they became gradually less dense as the day drew to a close … The duration of this flight being about fourteen hours, viz. from four a.m. to six p.m, the column (allowing a probable velocity of sixty miles an hour
) could not have been less than three hundred miles in length, with an average breadth, as before stated of one mile.

  During the following day and for several days afterwards, they still continued flying over in immense though greatly diminished numbers, broken up into flocks and keeping much lower, possibly being weaker or younger birds.11

  Graph showing the relationship between the size and speed of the passenger pigeon flight that passed over Fort Mississauga, Ontario (circa May 1860). Based on graph created by Ken Brock

  King never offered a numerical estimate, but Schorger, assigning two birds per square yard and a speed of sixty miles per hour, concludes that the flight involved an amazing 3,717,120,000 pigeons. At least three different scientists have each worked King’s data in recent years and come up with the same results as Schorger, although doubting that the pigeons would be flying at 60 mph as a normal speed during migration. (Though as discussed above, band-tailed pigeons can at times fly considerably faster.) Ken Brock of Indiana University Northwest created a graph showing the numbers of birds at speeds from 35 to 60 mph. But even at 35 mph, closer to the speed at which mourning doves fly, which is more unlikely given that the passenger pigeon was a far more accomplished flier than the dove, King witnessed well over a billion birds passing over Fort Mississauga during the period of his observation.12

  To make the size of King’s flight easier to grasp, Schorger divided the size of the flocks into the acreage that produced it: nearly four billion birds drew upon the fecundity of 950 million acres. Four birds an acre can be grasped. But it is misleading, too, because not every passenger pigeon was in that small section of Ontario. No one can know how many of these birds survived throughout the extensive range. To get a handle on that question would have required the employment of scientific techniques that neither existed nor would likely to have been supported given the lack of concern, appropriate resources, and institutions. Schorger’s “guess” (his word) that three, and possibly up to five, billion passenger pigeons were present at the time Europeans first arrived on these shores seems to have been offered reluctantly, almost in the way of getting past a recurring question that can never be answered with any degree of confidence. (Schorger was meticulous and did not often engage in conjecture.) Whatever the number, this species enjoyed a population that may have exceeded that of every other bird on earth, and its aggregations surpassed in numbers those of every other terrestrial vertebrate on the continent.13