Guide to Bird Watching

The Passenger Pigeon

In 1914 the last known living passenger pigeon died. This was a captive bird in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens. In the wild state the species has long been considered extinct.

The last records of specimens taken are of two birds, one near Detroit, Michigan, and one at Canandaigua Lake, New York, both, by a most remarkable circumstance, on the same day, September 14, 1898. There were many reports of birds seen after that date, but although some may have been true, most of these reports were due to mistaking other birds for the pigeon.

Wholesale slaughter by man was doubtless the chief cause of extermination in this case.

The wild pigeon was once extremely abundant. Early writers tell of flocks of "countless millions" which "darkened the sky" and required days to pass a given point.

They nested in great colonies, every available tree over a wide extent of forest being occupied by up to as many as fourty or fifty pairs. As late as 1876, a nesting in Michigan averaged three or four miles in width, and extended for twenty-eight miles.