If there is any creature that puts into perspective the power of mankind to destroy... it is this one. The Passenger Pigeon, or Migrating Dove (Ectopistes migratorius) was the most numerous and successful species of bird to ever exist on earth. It lived in almost inconceivable numbers across all of forested North America.

Just to give you an idea... it has been estimated that four out of every ten birds in north America at the time of its discovery was a Passenger Pigeon...40% of the entire bird population on the continent!!!

Their numbers had ALREADY been considerably diminished by 1870...when a flock flew over Cincinnati that was a mile wide and 320 miles long...containing over two billion birds!!! In 1813 James Audubon was on a 55 mile wagon trip from his home on the Ohio river to Louisville, Kentucky when a flock passed overhead. They flew overhead at the rate of a mile a minute...in one huge mass...eclipsing the sun from noon until sunset, when he reached Louisville. Other flocks followed this one for three days. He estimated that every three hours, 1,015,036,000 birds flew by. He also estimated that such a flock would eat 8,712,000 bushels of food DAILY! Such flocks were reported to have sounded like thunder...or a million sleigh bells... as they passed overhead.The sound must have been deafening.

When flocks like this stopped to nest, tree branches as thick as a man's thigh would snap like twigs. ...And when the pigeons (did what pigeons do best)... it made the forest floor look like it was covered in snow.

Passengers didn't always stay in the huge flocks. When food was scarce they were spread out across the country in smaller groups...but when food was plentiful they came back together by the millions.

Pigeon hunting soon became big business. One merchant in New York in the 1850's reported selling 18,000 a day. They were the cheapest meat around, their feathers were used for pillows and quilts, and there was a huge market for live birds to be used in trap shooting. One of the methods used to lure pigeons into nets was to sew a pigeons eyes shut and tack its feet to a stand. When the other pigeons came to investigate the fluttering victim, they were easily netted. Thus the term "Stool Pigeon".

Pigeon hunting was a full-time job for thousands of men, who used the telegraph to report on the movements of the huge flocks. They would then descend on the nesting grounds to slaughter birds by the millions. Within fifty years, the great flocks that had once darkened the horizon for miles were gone. In 1896, just outside Bowling Green, Ohio, the last 250,000 or so came together in one last nesting flock in the forest on the Green River. The call went out and hunters arrived by railway to do their job. They killed around 240,000. Over 100,000 newborn chicks, too young to fend for themselves, were also left to die. Maybe 5,000 escaped. All of the usable carcasses were loaded into boxcars to be sent east, but the train derailed. The rotting carcasses of 200,000 birds were all dumped into a deep ravine a few miles from the train depot.

The last Passenger Pigeon to ever be seen in the wild was shot by a young boy on March 24th, 1900, in Pike County, Ohio.
Fourteen years later, on September 1, 1914, at 1:00 P.M., "Martha", a 29 year old captive-born Passenger Pigeon died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was the last of her kind.-S.