Hobbies And Interests
Physical Description
The passenger pigeon measured about 15 inches in length, with a wingspan of about 23 inches. The tail narrowed to a wedge. The birds had plump bodies with small, bluish heads and dark bills. The eyes were scarlet and the feet were red,. Parts of the neck and breast gleamed gold and orange-red or shimmered lavender or green, while a significant portion of the feathers covering the back were bright blue. As with other bird species, male passenger pigeons boasted brighter plumage than females.
Range and Dietary Habits
The passenger pigeon inhabited the forests of the eastern United States and central Canada, flying in great flocks numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The term "passenger pigeon" referred not only to the species' migratory behavior in cooling weather, but also its habitual flights in search of food or nesting sites.
The passenger pigeon nested in a restricted area ranging from the Great Lakes eastward to New York. The birds migrated southward toward Arkansas, North Carolina and the Gulf Coast in search of warmth in the cooler months. These pigeons consumed a varied diet consisting of nuts, seeds and berries, complemented by worms and insects during warmer months.
Celebrated ornithologist John Audubon once commented that a single flock of passenger pigeons took three days to traverse the sky over his head.
Behavior
Equipped with formidable wings and strong flight muscles, passenger pigeons flew about a mile a minute. When night fell, they would congregate in the trees to roost. Roosting birds could cover the ground with a layer of droppings inches thick. The accumulated waste provided nutrients for plants and enriched the soil. When the passenger pigeons found a suitable place to nest en masse, they could cover 40 square miles. They did not mind traveling up to 50 miles -- almost an hour's flight away -- to find food, and their foraging often left entire forests bare.
Reproduction
The downfall of the passenger pigeon might be partly attributed to its breeding pickiness. Efforts to breed the birds in captivity failed.
The notes of the passenger pigeon's mating call were loud and not soothing to the ears, a possible adaptation to drown out the cacophony of other males in the area. Males beat their wings, pranced, and bobbed their heads at potential mates. The male bird then crept up to the female and engaged in a sort of bird "hug." The female, if receptive, would reciprocate the embrace.
The birds preferred to mate in the wild amid a large congregation, possibly an adaptation for safety. A female produced a single egg after mating.
History and Decline
A combination of habitat destruction and overhunting led to the demise of the passenger pigeon. Settlers of North America found the flesh of the plump passenger pigeon tasty. Responding to the huge market for pigeons as meat, fertilizer and feed, hunters and trappers killed the birds in vast numbers. The birds, which traveled and flocked together in large masses, found themselves trapped in nets by following decoy pigeons, beaten from their roosts and smoked from trees and shot. Hunters in Michigan killed about 50,000 birds a day for five months, knowingly wiping out the world's last large flock.
Extinction
By the time conservationists acted, the passenger pigeon population had entered an irreversible decline. In 1900 a boy boasted of killing the last passenger pigeon in the wild. With the small number of birds scattered among zoos, the birds could not breed in captivity. Biologists helplessly watched while Martha, the last remnant of her species, succumbed to old age. What remains of the passenger pigeon are grainy photographs, vague descriptions and a handful of stuffed specimens in museums. The most significant is the stuffed corpse of Martha, the last passenger pigeon, within the vaults of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.