A Feathered River Across the Sky

by Joel Greenberg

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  Plates Section

  Passenger Pigeons in Flight was painted by Lewis Cross in 1937. Cross was a practitioner of “narrative natural history painting” and is perhaps unique in both drawing the species and knowing the bird in his lifetime. Narrative natural history painting is a term used by Walton Ford to distinguish art that is more expressive than art meant solely to depict a subject through a technically accurate portrait. (From the collection of the Lakeshore Museum Center, Muskegon, Michigan; photograph taken by Fred Reinecke)

  Mark Catesby spent eleven years in the New World sketching and collecting natural history specimens before returning to England in 1726 and publishing The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. Volume I contains the earliest known colored drawing of the passenger pigeon. The plate illustrated here is from a later German edition that relies upon Catesby’s image. (From the collection of Garrie Landry and with additional information from Susan Wegner)

  Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology (1808–1814) featured pictures of 268 species, including this passenger pigeon in volume V. The two warblers that accompany the pigeon are the Blackburnian (called by Wilson the “hemlock warbler”) and the mysterious “blue mountain warbler,” a bird of uncertain identity that has not been encountered since the early nineteenth century. (From the collection of the Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois)

  John James Audubon’s portrait of a male and female passenger pigeon is the best known of any for the species. His classic The Birds of America included 435 hand-colored plates and was released in four volumes between 1827 and 1838. These were accompanied by five volumes of text entitled Ornithological Biography. (From the collection of Garrie Landry)

  Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874–1927) was one of the country’s premier bird artists of the early twentieth century. He produced a number of passenger pigeon paintings, including this one of an adult male, female, and young that appeared in Forbush’s Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States (1927). The plate also features two mourning doves, an adult and young. (From the collection of Garrie Landry)

  This painting by John Ruthven, often called the twentieth-century Audubon, depicts a male passenger pigeon at the John Roebling Suspension Bridge. Spanning the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Covington, Kentucky, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world when first opened on December 1, 1866. (Courtesy of John A. Ruthven at www.ruthven.com)

  Mary Ijams holding a stuffed passenger pigeon in 1928 that her father, H. P. Ijams, had recently purchased. The bird had been shot by General Benjamin Cheatham near Nashville in 1856 and is now in the collection of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. (Courtesy of Paul James, Ijams Nature Center, Knoxville, Tennessee)

  Shooting Wild Pigeons in Northern Louisiana is based on a sketch by Smith Bennett and appeared in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News of July 3, 1875. Schorger considered this picture to be particularly accurate. (From the collection of Garrie Landry)

  “Educational sliced puzzles” for children were produced principally by two firms, Layman and Curtsies and Selchow and Righter, for the purpose of helping children both spell and learn the names of animals. This particular puzzle of a passenger pigeon was part of a set that featured twelve other birds. (From the collection of Garrie Landry)

  The Travelers Insurance Company ran this picture as part of an advertisement in the September 1936 issue of National Geographic. (The original watercolor is part of the company’s collection, but the artist is unknown.) The ad copy underneath the image was: “A century ago the great naturalist, James [sic] Audubon, observed this species in such abundance that he did not believe its numbers would ever be greatly diminished. Yet the last passenger pigeon vanished twenty years ago. If the fate of an entire species is unpredictable, how much more so are the fortunes of an individual? That is why the wise man, no matter how abundant his fortunes today, prepares for adversities that may befall tomorrow. Moral: Insure in The
Travelers.” (From the collection of Garrie Landry; scan by Steve Sullivan)

  Passenger pigeons have been featured on the postage or commemorative stamps of such countries as Tanzania (shown left), Mozambique, Cuba (shown right), and Norway. (From the collection of Garrie Landry)

  Male passenger pigeon drawn by K. Hayashi from a live bird in the collection of Charles Otis Whitman. Hayashi was among the few artists who painted the species using live passenger pigeons as his models. This and the other pictures in Whitman’s book are considered among the most accurate drawings of the bird, although the Japanese-like background reflects the sensibility of the artist more than the reality of the bird’s habitat. (From Posthumous Works of Charles Otis Whitman, plate 29 (1919), in the collection of Bowdoin College, courtesy of Susan Wegner)

  Small Game of the Alleghenies is a stereopticon card that features an image unique in the passenger pigeon annals: along with gray squirrels and ruffed grouse, there are three freshly killed passenger pigeons. The photo was probably taken during the 1870s by R. A. Bonine. (From the collection of Destry Hoffard)

  This tintype, probably taken in the 1860s but possibly as late as the 1880s, is one of only two known photos of live passenger pigeons that do not depict the flocks kept by Whitman or the Cincinnati Zoo. Two pigeoners pose with their gear and three stool pigeons. (From the collection of Destry Hoffard)

  Old-Fort Erie with the Migration of the Wild-Pidgeon in Spring is dated April 18, 1804, and was painted by Dr. Edward Walsh. A native of Waterford, Ireland, he served as lieutenant surgeon in the British Army and was stationed in various parts of Canada from 1803–1809. His pictures of Montreal, Fort Erie, and Fort George were released as aquatints in 1811. (From the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; painting data by Mary Allodi of ROM)

  This haunting painting, entitled Beech Grove-Passenger Pigeon, is by David Hagerbaumer, whose watercolors often feature game birds in flight. His works have been collected in two books, Selected American Game Birds and The Bottoms. (Courtesy of David Hagerbaumer)