A Feathered River Across the Sky

by Joel Greenberg

  Chapter 10

  Extinction and Beyond

  All thinking people now realize that man alone was responsible for the extinction of the passenger pigeon so that further discussion of this phase of the subject is unnecessary.

  —A. W. SCHORGER

  Many had difficulty acknowledging that the passenger pigeon had reached extinction. Such a thing was simply not possible. There had to be some other explanation for their apparent absence. Science published an article whose author claimed that the species had retreated in great numbers to the deserts of Arizona. A Condor reviewer minced no words in responding, pointing out that since the writer had confused such distinctive birds as California quail and Gambel’s quail, there was no reason to believe he could identify passenger pigeons. The Auk ran a note suggesting that the birds had escaped “persecution” by hiding out in an “extensive plain” fifteen miles east of Puget Sound. The report dated from 1877, but the author seems to endorse the idea that the entire population of the species might be moving around in places it was never known to occur: “Every bird lover would rejoice to hear that this wonderful bird had finally outwitted its great persecutor and lengthened its lease on life by ‘going West’ in the true American spirit of liberty.”1

  At least nothing in these musings suggested that the birds had abandoned the continent, unlike the Wisconsin lumberman familiar with the species who “saw millions of the genuine old time Passenger Pigeons” in the pine forests of Chile. Others placed the birds in Australia. But it wasn’t enough for some that the crafty pigeons were hiding out in remote locations where no one would think to look. For them, the real reason the pigeon vanished is that it evolved into a different form whose behavior and appearance rendered it unrecognizable to ornithologists. Under this scenario the species had assumed a disguise, a renovated plumage far more “gorgeous” than before, and more befitting of its new tropical home in Colombian jungles.2

  Acceptance of the pigeon’s extinction came easier to a different group of unorthodox thinkers. Yes, tragically, there were no more pigeons, but what in the world could have caused their demise? Many of these people held that the birds had all drowned while crossing a large body of water, usually one of the Great Lakes or the Gulf of Mexico. Henry Ford, according to his secretary in a letter to W. B. Mershon, evidently believed the harried birds perished in the Pacific Ocean as they dashed to freedom in Asia. Sometimes the watery deaths were not occasioned by volitional acts of the bird but by powerful windstorms or dense fog that confused the mighty flocks into veering far offshore.3

  More plausible notions have been advanced to explain, at least in part, what happened. The most persistent of these is that disease thinned the feathered hordes. It has the appeal of minimizing the human influence and allows for a speedy demise. Regrettably, for proponents, no evidence for this exists. Nothing in the literature points to masses of birds dying for unknown reasons, and most modern commentators have rejected this.4

  In recent times, other efforts have been made to downplay the central role that direct human exploitation played in the species’ extinction. It is almost as if sheer slaughter is too simplistic and more intricate ecological factors must be at play. One author of a prominent article in 1992 had evidently combed the literature looking for novel explanations. So there was the assertion that birds required a nesting area with recently melted snow to provide ample ground forage. This ignores the nestings in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and many northern locations where there was no heavy snow the year before. Such a situation also prevailed in the Petoskey area in 1878. This author also attributed competition for acorns with feral swine as another important factor in the bird’s demise. The example of Texas vitiates this argument. The state supported large numbers of feral pigs, and the passenger pigeons seemed to do fine despite their porcine competitors. The pigeons were so persistent, which surely they would not have been had they found insufficient forage, the locals resorted to extreme measures in driving them out, including burning the woods that supported both the birds and the pigs. To support the notion that regardless of the slaughter only habitat loss could reduce the number of pigeons, Audubon’s opinion is cited; but Audubon made the statement while the species was still abundant, and it was based in part on his false beliefs that passenger pigeons laid two eggs and nested multiple times during the year.5

  In assessing the reasons for the bird’s extinction, some things have been overlooked. Most accounts say that the decline was not sudden but took place over three centuries. They quote Josselyn (1674), Kalm (1750), and Smith (1765) to the effect that people had noticed a decline in the species for a long time. As the East Coast and other areas became settled, they obviously became less able to host the same number of birds that they used to. By 1840 or so, “great nestings became few and far between in the east,” wrote Forbush. No doubt the population was less than it was at its highest point, whenever that was.6

  But Major King’s amazing flight of over a billion birds took place in 1860. Schorger estimates that eleven years later, the Wisconsin Dells nesting, which in his view comprised almost the entire population then existing, numbered 136 million nesting birds (this omitted non-nesting birds and squabs). The additional pigeons that nested in Minnesota that same time raises the total by several million. There was also a reported nesting that year in Cochrane County, Ontario, said to be in the millions. So if King was remotely accurate in describing what he saw, and Schorger was in the ballpark in his estimate of the Wisconsin nesting (and even adding millions more birds from Minnesota and Ontario), then a reduction of no less than a billion birds occurred in eleven years. If there were a lot more birds in 1871 than Schorger estimated, the window of collapse would be extended a decade. And even if King’s description is wildly exaggerated, the population went from hundreds of millions to zero in only forty years.

  Another reality that is often overlooked in trying to fathom why the species’ population plummeted in decades is that little about the bird’s requirements are known with certainty. What is indisputable is that their population was bewilderingly vast in 1860 but virtually gone by 1900. As the preceding chapters also demonstrate, Homo sapiens slaughtered the bird methodically and relentlessly. Most everything else is a matter of speculation.

  For example, although sometimes overlooked by superficial examinations of the record, the birds did not always nest in the gargantuan concentrations that received almost all of the attention. Nestings ranged from a pair or two through small colonies to large colonies. The assumption is always that these attempts rarely succeeded, what with a single egg, conspicuous nest, etc., but the data are nonexistent, for no one allowed the birds to live long enough to find out, or if some amazing oddball did actually have the patience and self-restraint to check, the findings have been lost or have at least eluded me. But although such observations are lacking, at least some of these nesting efforts did result in fledged young because a number of the last specimens, including Buttons herself, were of first-year birds.7

  There is also the assumption that the birds could not survive in the absence of mast. Mast was their preference during nesting, but they ate lots of things, and vast flocks often relied on other foods over varying periods at other times of the year. The rich nuts were highly nutritious, but that birds could have been sustained during a given nesting season by another food source seems likely, even if the number of young produced was possibly lessened. They nested well north of oak lands in Ontario, and an early account details a large nesting in the vicinity of Moose Factory, at the southern end of James Bay. Excluding oak, beech, and chestnuts, Schorger lists close to forty genera of wild plants known to have been eaten by passenger pigeons. In addition, they preyed on earthworms, snails, and numerous types of insects.8

  If, as the above paragraph argues, the birds were indeed more catholic in their tastes, it means they had fewer restrictions on where they could live and nest. But even if that was not the case, more than enough nut trees remained to ke
ep the birds going well beyond the 1880s. The first trees to be cut in northern areas were pine, and high-quality pigeon forage such as oak (particularly), birch, and aspen often appeared soon thereafter to colonize open ground. Eventually the accelerating loss of forest habitat would almost certainly have reduced the bird’s population beyond the point of sustainability (at least in the absence of significant human assistance), but the species did not last long enough for that to happen.9

  So, then, what did happen to the passenger pigeon? In the words of filmmaker David Mrazek, “You could say we happened to the pigeon.” Europeans began the killing on or about July 12, 1605, and their successors, the residents of Canada and the United States, did not stop until there were literally no more birds left. When that happened, they shot mourning doves in the belief they were passenger pigeons. Virtually every time Homo sapiens crossed paths with the pigeons, pigeons died.10

  The intensity and thoroughness of the slaughter increased with the demographic and technological changes of the nineteenth century. The burgeoning populations of our urban centers needed cheap food. The wild game of the continent suffered inordinately to meet that demand, becoming a commodity fueling an industry. Since passenger pigeons were the most abundant dietary items among terrestrial vertebrates, few if any sources of high-quality protein cost less. They did not inhabit inaccessible parts of the west, nor were they sedentary creatures ensconced in inhospitable swamps far from probing human eyes. Their huge colonies could be reached. And whereas once the highly vagile species might have put down in some out-of-the-way place where they could find respite for a while, by the mid-1800s the growing ranks of telegraph operators made sure that the news of their whereabouts was soon humming through the lines to alert the hundreds of professional pigeoners and other interested parties. Remoteville, a hamlet tucked into the Missouri Ozarks, could quickly share news with the world.

  Once the pros and local talent converged on the birds, the proximity of rail lines made transferral of the pigeons to larger regional and national markets easier and cheaper. As the 1881 Oklahoma nesting demonstrated, schlepping wagonloads of pigeons for three days across mountains to reach a train station failed to deter the dedicated pigeon dealer. At most, the difficulty in accessing rail transport merely reduced profits a bit.

  As I have already indicated, habitat loss reduced the territory where the birds could collect in large numbers, but there was still plenty of food to sate the legions of pigeons. This whittling away of habitat did, however, make the birds easier to discover and kill. By the 1870s, most of the big nestings took place in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ontario. Another idea that has been advanced is that as the birds decreased along with a more fragmented landscape, it may have been more difficult to locate the best places to roost and nest. In other words, fewer eyes were looking for suitable locations. On the other hand, there were also fewer stomachs to fill, so this factor is likely of limited importance, but may have had some marginal effect.11

  A widely held view is that this species could not sustain itself without a large population. In part, it is the converse of why, presumably, passenger pigeons evolved the way they did: by massing in vast quantities they satiated any predator well before any serious harm could be done to the majority. This is the reason oaks and beeches produce huge crops in some years, and why periodic cicadas emerge in untold numbers every thirteen or seventeen years: the surfeit of nuts and insects ensures sufficient reproduction to keep the species going. As passenger pigeon numbers declined, they reached some threshold, still large for most species, below which they lost the capacity to make up for the high mortality they suffered through anthropogenic and other causes. The decline itself likely fostered increased mortality, making individual birds more vulnerable to predators. As one final nail, the ever-shrinking numbers may have lessened the stimulation needed for the synchrony of breeding that marked the big colonies.12

  I have been immersed in the passenger pigeon literature since August 2009 and have devoted little time to anything else. That this spectacular and horrific extinction happened is clear; nor is there doubt that ceaseless, unbridled slaughter by human beings caused it. But I have struggled in accepting as sufficient the purported factors that reduced a billion or more birds to zero in four decades. This suddenness led to the fanciful explanations advanced during the early twentieth century and has long left me and others feeling unsatisfied.

  But it becomes comprehensible when one thinks in terms of all that did and did not happen. For an avian species to sustain itself, a sufficient number of adults must lay fertile eggs, the eggs must hatch, the chicks must fledge, and the young birds must mature to begin the cycle over again: all the links in the chain of life must remain intact or the process fails. Most commentators have tended to focus on one or another of those links when in reality all of the links were simultaneously being compromised. The killing of the adults needs no elaboration. I have already noted that by the 1870s, the birds became more nervous and abandoned nesting sites with greater frequency. This may also have been a function of smaller numbers: the birds perhaps required the comfort afforded by having millions of neighbors. But with the ever-increasing intensity of exploitation, the birds became less tolerant of disturbance and quicker to give up their breeding aspirations.

  While reduced, not all nesting terminated, however, and chicks were produced as evidenced by the barrels of squabs carted out of the big nestings throughout the 1870s. What has not received much attention—indeed only Derek Goodwin addresses it—is the purported practice of adult passenger pigeons, alone among all pigeons, to abandon their chubby chicks several days before they could fly. No pigeon species routinely abandons their flightless young, but most have low tolerance for molestation and are easily flushed off nests. A vast majority of these new chicks would have been doomed. The young birds seen rising in clouds from the colonies to join their parents would have referred to youngsters left alone much closer to fledging. With millions of birds present, dead chicks everywhere, and no one paying any attention to such nuances, the distinction between abandoned squabs whose flight was imminent versus those that were days away would have been lost. When the older young did fledge and took off to join the adults, it would have been reasonable to figure that the flock included the younger birds as well.13

  Given the capacity to lay but one egg per annum, two years would have to elapse to replace the loss of every adult pair. With insufficient recruitment and nonstop killing that became even less restrained as the birds decreased, senescence caught up to the surviving adults and the species sputtered to an end. We may never fully understand or perhaps even identify all of the synergies that eventually led to 1914, for the historical record leaves unanswered certain questions. It is possible that some of these gaps in our knowledge may yet be filled through genetic analysis, which is being undertaken at several labs in the United States and Canada. But we should seek no solace in the presence of any contributory factors that may have come into play during those final decades of the bird’s existence: if a person is shoved off a pier and drowns because he can’t swim, culpability and the ultimate cause remain with the one who pushed.

  THE ECHOES OF THEIR WINGS

  It is late. It is too late as to the wild pigeon. The buffalo is almost a thing of the past, but there still remains much to preserve, and we must act earnestly if we would accomplish good things.

  —REPRESENTATIVE JOHN FLETCHER LACEY, ON THE FLOOR

  OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON APRIL 30, 1900,

  INTRODUCING WHAT WOULD BECOME THE FIRST

  FEDERAL BIRD-PROTECTION LAW

  Silence clutched the land and could not be ignored. No longer would the hum of pigeon wings rain down from vernal skies. The lowing of bison emanated from only a handful of animals, restricted to one vast tract of wilderness in northeastern Alberta and another flanking the headwaters of the Yellowstone River. Empty leks became mere reminders of the haunting strains of prairie-chicken music
that formerly permeated the creeping dawn. Squawking rookeries of herons, gulls, and terns were stilled as their former inhabitants were transformed into hat decorations. Even the sharp reports of gunfire ebbed in many places as the legions of waterfowl and shorebirds that used to fill wagons were reduced to tiny flocks, if encountered at all. One needed to be neither perceptive nor learned to notice the change, for the evidence was everywhere.

  Out of this quiet surged the country’s first environmental movement. Three principal groups drove the concern that culminated in those early wildlife laws that still provide the basis for how the United States and Canada manage their biological heritage. The “scientific naturalists” provided the hard data and the organizational skills to coordinate the activities of their two major partners, who had very different perspectives from one another. The sportsmen’s associations enjoyed large and influential memberships that were critical in furthering the conservation agenda. These associations were a mixed bag, however. The New York association, for example, put on shooting contests in which tens of thousands of passenger pigeons were killed, but had a solid track record in other aspects of conservation such as protecting fish stocks and preserving game. The final group is least well documented, for it consisted mostly of unheralded women and even children who wrote letters, collected money, and joined state Audubon societies in large numbers. They were moved largely by a distaste for cruelty and the gratuitous killing of animals.14

  The American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) came into being in 1883 and produced a model bird law three years later. The proposed statute banned the killing of nongame birds, defined which birds were game birds, and made it unlawful to destroy the nests and eggs of all species, whichever of the two categories they were in. House sparrows, newly introduced from Europe, were specifically exempted from any mercy. Most of the work to persuade states to enact protective laws fell to the National Association of Audubon Societies, led by William Dutcher. Their efforts reaped great success, for over the next fifteen years, comprehensive bird-protection measures were ratified in fifteen states, thirteen of which adopted the model law. Only Idaho and the Indian Territories lacked any restrictions on the killing of nongame birds. Other states offered varying degrees of protection, but none more subjectively than Nebraska. After listing as protected such types as robin, “thrush,” and “yellow bird,” the Nebraska statute adds “or other bird or birds of like nature that promote agriculture and horticulture by feeding on noxious worms and insects, or that are attractive in appearance or cheerful in song.”15