AX F 465 1S opy 1 fan a 9) me pj me pp ee 99 me pth me 1 ee Hh) ef hh HH Hh HN NE HH) I HH HH HT HN Nl || HT | | || | ||| || | HN Earliest Mention of Pigeons. Than Once in Two Years. Courtesy of Ithaca (N. Y.) Gun Company HE female bird at the left is Martha, died in Cincinnati zoo in 1914. Male bird made up from picture of Martha and description of writers at different times on _ the pigeon question, Slaughter by Trappers. Did They Nest Oftener Lake and Ocean. Canker in Pigeons. End of the Wild Pigeon Colony in 18806, —i—— i | HH | HH Immense Drowning in ed ed ee ee ee ee ee ee — THE PASSENGER PIGEON By W. W. Thompson, Coudersport, Pa. Numbers. — i | | | ll | | | | | | | || | THE PASSENGER PIGEON By W. W. Thompson Coudersport, Pa. The earliest mention of Passen- ger Pigeons, once so plentiful, now extinct, appeared in a report of two voyages to New England made dur- ing 1638 and 1663, by Joseph Jos- selyn, published in 1674. “The Pidgeons, of which there are mil- lions of millions, I have seen a flight of Pidgeons in the Spring and at Michaelmas, when they returned back to the Southland for four or five miles, that to my thinking had neither beginning or ending, length or breadth, so thick I could See no Sun. They join nest to nest and tree to tree by their nests, miles to- gether, in Pine trees. I have bought in Boston a dozen pidgeons already pulled and garbidged for three pence. But of late they are much diminished, the English taking them with nets.” It took more than two hundred years ‘‘diminishing”’ to reach the vanishing point. In 1759 Peter Kalm writes of the vast number of pidgeons in Pennsyl- vania and New Jersey in the Spring of 1740, describes their habits, ete. In their fight coming in, lasting for seven days, often the light was sen- sibly diminished, limbs as thick as a man’s thigh were broken off where they roosted. About a_ week after these pigeons left ‘‘a sea captain by the name of Aimes, who had just arrived at Philadelphiia, and after him several seafaring men, stated that they had found localities out at sea where the water to an extent of over three French miles was entire- ly covered by dead pigeons.” ‘It was conjectured that the pigeons, whether owing to a storm, mist or snowfall, had been carried away to the sea, and then on account of darkness had alighted on the water and in that place and manner met their fate.”’ This seems to be a well authenticated account of Pigeons drowning in the Atlantic, and so far as we know the only one—more than one hundred years’ before’ the pigeons became noticeably ‘‘extinct.” Some years after the pigeons were practically gone we read an item al- most identically the same as the Kalm report, even to the ‘‘French Miles” in some paper, and we believe this is the foundation for all of the stories that the birds perished by drowning in the Atlantic Ocean. Peter Kalm also wrote of a Jour- ney to Canada in 1749, and passing through a pigeon nesting. This is noticeable from the fact that it re- cords a pigeon nesting in an odd numbered year. He states that the Governor General of Canada had on two occasions shipped quite a large number of pigeons to France to be turned out in French forests. A de cendant, probably, of these ghip- ments, mounted, is one of the prize specimens in the Paris Public Mus- eum, John James Audubon, the great Naturalist, as early as 1810-13 de- votes much space to pigeons. He es- timated the number up in the bDil- lions, and their daily food at 8,712,- 000 bushels. He writes of the trap- ping, shooting and squabbing in his day which to him seems to cause an enormous death rate, and_ says, “Persons unacquainted with these birds might naturally conelude that such dreadful havoc would soon put an end to the species. But I satisfied myself by long observation that nothing but the gradual diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease, as they not unfrequently quadruple their numbers yearly and always double it.’’ He estimated in 1810, 5,000,000,000 birds in the three States, Kentucky, Ohio and In- diana, at the same time there were nestings in other States. At this rate of increase how long would it require to overrun the entire pigeon section from the Plains East to the coast, and from the Gulf to Hudson’s Bay. They simply did not increase at any such rate. True, immense numbers (as we would rate them now) were killed by animals and _ birds, at nesting times but these were only killed by the virmin able to obtain a living before the birds came, they did not increase with the pigeons at that particular time. Shipping facilities were such that man killed principal- ly for local use, for very many years. We think it must have been in the ‘60s that market pigeoners became much of a factor, during the the Civil War not much attention couid have been paid to the shipping of pigeons to market, and it was not until the ’70s that the “great slaughter’’ took place. Michigan was the greatest of the pigeon States from the fact of hav- ing the best transportation facili- ties, by rail and water. Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and in fact all States having hardwood forests were the nesting grounds of the Pas- senger Pigeon, and later in the sea- son so much of Canada as had the hardwoods. Some early settlers be- lieved the birds nested every month in the year except February, it is doubtful if they nested more than from two to three times the same year, according to the supply of food. The greatest slaughter of pigeons for market took place in Michigan, in 1876 and in 1878, and from the fact that after this time there were few nesting anywhere, the _ dis- appearance of the pigeons has been laid to the ruthless killing in these two years.