![]() Recently, Martha has become the unlikely heroine of a new debate that seems to come out of a science fiction novel. In 1900, these three populations were essentially all that was left of a species that may have made up as much as 40 percent of the North American bird population. Martha was later donated to the Cincinnati Zoo. She was probably born into a captive flock at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo (her mother may have earlier resided in the Milwaukee Zoo). Predation-by humans or natural enemies-had a greater impact. When their numbers were reduced, even though there were still many passenger pigeons, breeding success declined. Another possible explanation for the rapid demise was that the bird had evolved to live and reproduce in large colonies. The clearing of Eastern forests was another factor in their extinction. By 1900 no more than a handful were reported. But by 1890 passenger pigeons were an unusual sight in the wild-they had become a prized food source, hunted relentlessly, shot, netted and burned out of trees, for a huge commercial market. Roosting passenger pigeons often landed in sufficient numbers to shear limbs from trees. The largest documented nesting of passenger pigeons occurred in Wisconsin in 1871: An estimated 136 million breeding birds covered some 850 square miles of forest. In spring 1860, a flock of passenger pigeons estimated at more than 3.7 billion flew over Ontario. Males had gray-blue backs and wings, with a copper-colored breast, while females such as Martha were a duller version of this. Passenger pigeons were handsome birds, half again the size of a mourning dove. Today, she resides, in taxidermied form, at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she is on view through October 2015 in the exhibition “Once There Were Billions”-accompanied by specimens of three other extinct avian species: the great auk, Carolina parakeet and heath hen.Ĭlaire Rosen (Wallpaper: Thibaut Little Rock Pattern, Historic Homes Vol. Only a century after that flock passed through Kentucky like a hurricane, the last passenger pigeon died in a drab cage at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens. The flight continued through the night and into the next day-and then the next.Īnd then they were gone. ![]() The banks of the Ohio River in the city were crowded with men and boys shooting at the flock, and dead pigeons were piled at their feet. When Audubon reached Louisville at the end of the day, the pigeons were still flying, their ranks undiminished. ![]() “The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow and the continued buzz of the wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.” “The air was literally filled with Pigeons,” Audubon wrote. The birds swept overhead from one edge of the sky to the other. Audubon-pioneer, frontier merchant, peerless bird artist and the creator of The Birds of America- stopped to witness one of the greatest natural spectacles ever seen. In the fall of 1813, John James Audubon was traveling by horseback to Louisville from his home in Henderson, Kentucky, when he saw an immense flock of birds coming straight at him. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |