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As discussed last week, passenger pigeons darkened our skies for thousands of years. At one time, they may have been the most numerous birds on earth, with 3 billion to 5 billion of them roaming North American skies. There were so many that they obscured the sun, and according to ornithologist William Brewster, “the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify the horses, and it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without bawling in his ear … On some single trees upwards of one hundred nests were found.”
According to ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush, because passenger pigeons were so numerous there were “not many records of the flights of Pigeons in Massachusetts during the early part of the nineteenth century. They were of such regular occurrence that no one thought of recording them. Dr. Samuel Cabot told Mr. Brewster that from 1832 to 1836, while he was in college at Cambridge [Massachusetts], Pigeons visited the town regularly, both in spring and autumn, sometimes in immense numbers.”
A 2017 study of passenger pigeon DNA shows that their population remained steady in North America for 20,000 years. Their vast numbers aided their survival. There were so many that all the eagles and hawks and owls and wolves and bobcats and bears and snakes and weasels and raccoons and other predators could not extinguish them – until European predators arrived, that is. Europeans used the latest technology to massacre the birds en masse: Telegraphs, introduced in the 1860s, wired news to hunters about flock locations. Railroads made it easy to transport barrels and barrels and barrels of dead birds to markets far away in the east. By the late 1800s, trappers followed the flocks around all year. One hunter alone sent 3 million birds from Michigan to the east in 1878.
Although also hunted by indigenous peoples, passenger pigeon populations had remained steady under their watch. In 1895, Chief Pokagon, the last Potawatomi chief, had this to say about his memories of the passenger pigeon:
Between 1840 and 1880 I visited … many brooding places that were from twenty to thirty miles long and from three to four miles wide, every tree spotted with nests. Yet, notwithstanding their countless numbers, great endurance, and long life, they have almost entirely disappeared from our forests.
A pigeon nesting was always a great source of revenue to our people. Whole tribes would wigwam in the brooding places. They seldom killed the old birds, but made great preparation to secure their young … Under our manner of securing them, they continued to increase. White men commenced netting them for market about the year 1840 … As they were always prepared with trained stool-pigeons, which they carried with them, they were able to call down the passing flocks and secure as many by net as they were able to pack in ice and ship to market … During the thirty years of their greatest slaughter there must have been shipped to our great cities 5,700 tons of these birds.
William Brewster again described the scene:
These roosting places are always in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest … The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed; the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another; and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an ax. The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot; and numerous places could be pointed out, where, for several years after, scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance.
When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants, from considerable distances, visit them in the night with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them.
Passenger pigeons flew to places where they could find food. In fall, winter and spring, they ate seeds, especially acorns, beechnuts and chestnuts. In summer, they ate fruits and berries. Joints on each side of a pigeon’s lower jaw allowed the jaw to expand to swallow whole acorns. When full, their crop – a part of the esophagus many birds use as a food receptacle – could swell to the size of an orange, causing their neck to bulge out. In the crop they could store at least 17 acorns or 100 maple seeds. (It was said that if a hunter shot a passenger pigeon with a crop full of nuts, the pigeon would fall to the ground and rattle like a bag of marbles.) After filling the crop, pigeons perched in trees and using their gizzard, ground up their food overnight.
The extinction of the passenger pigeon has changed our landscape in many ways. For example, those acorns passenger pigeons ate? After passenger pigeons went extinct, they fed another species – the white-footed mouse – that was allowed to grew exponentially in Northeastern forests. The white-footed mouse carries Lyme-disease carrying ticks.
So although the two seem unrelated, the extinction of the passenger pigeon may have contributed to the increase in Lyme disease we see today.
In addition, passenger pigeon dung added nutrients to the soil. Their nesting and roosting habits created openings in the forest canopy where sunlight streamed in. These openings helped new trees and flowering plants to grow, which in turn encouraged bees and butterflies, which encouraged birds and small mammals that eat the bees and butterflies, and so on up the food chain. Without passenger pigeons, forest regeneration has become less dynamic. Even the trees are different: Where once white oak forests dominated, today red oaks proliferate.
What have we learned since the days of the passenger pigeon? Because of public outcry about the bird’s persecution and extinction, legislators passed conservation laws protecting migratory birds in North America. Many migratory birds are not protected in other parts of the world, though. Nonbird species are also often overhunted today, such as many species of fish. So enjoy that tuna sandwich while you can; future generations may not be so lucky.
Reader photo
John Mcatee spotted this raven in Pahrump, Nevada, this month.
Have you taken photos of our urban wild things? Send your images to Cambridge Day, and we may use them as part of a future feature. Include the photographer’s name and the general location where the photo was taken.
Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things.
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Thank you for your thoughtful writing on wildlife. I greatly enjoy reading and learning something new about nature each week.