PIGEUNS AND UUVES 



43 



elation in fact. It is probable that when they left 

 I'ctoskey in 1878 they retired into inaccessible 

 regions of Canada, beyond reach of the rail and 

 telegraph, to breed again. In April, 18S0, they 

 again passed through Michigan. 



There were man)' smaller nestings for years 

 after the Petoskey nesting of 1878, but the 

 records are meager, for apparently no naturalist 

 visited them. The I'ctoskey nesting of 1878 was 

 umisually large for that time, for the reason that 

 the birds at three large breeding places in other 

 States or regions were driven out by persecu- 

 tion, and joined the Petoskey group. Alter this 

 the birds exhibited a tendency to scatter to 

 regions where they were least molested. There 

 seem to have been two great nestings in Michigan 

 in 1881. 



Our Canadian records of the species at this 

 time are meager. Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton 

 says that it bred in Manitoba in considerable 

 numbers as late as 1887; but he also says that 

 the last year in which the Pigeons came to 

 Manitoba "in force" was in 1878; next year 

 they were comparatively scarce, and each year 

 since they have become more so. 



A flock was seen in Illinois in 1895, from 

 which two specimens were taken. At that time 

 the netting of the birds had been practically given 

 up, and most of the dealers had seen no Pigeons 

 for two seasons. It finally ceased, on account of 

 the virtual extinction of the birds. 



.■\. large correspondence and a careful search 

 through some of the literature of the latter part 

 of the century leads to the belief that the Pigeons 

 were common and in some cases abundant in 

 portions of the West from 1880 to 1890, though 

 gradually decreasing. After 1893 the reports 

 became more vague and less trustworthy, except 

 in a few cases. Small flocks were seen and 

 sijccimens taken in the last decade of the nine- 

 teenth century in Canada, and in Wisconsin, 

 Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana and other western 

 States and even in some of the Eastern States. 

 Chief Pokagon reported a nesting of Pigeons 

 near the headwaters of the Ausable River in 

 Michigan in 1896. In 1898 a flock of about 200 

 birds was said to have been seen in Michigan ; 

 one was taken ; and in 1900 about fifty birds were 

 reported. 



While the big nestings of 1878 and 1881 in 

 Michigan were the last immense breeding places 

 of Passenger Pigeons on record, the species did 

 not become extinct in a day or a year ; they were 

 not wiped from the face of the earth by any 

 great catastrophe ; they gradually became fewer 

 and fewer for twentv to twentv-five vears after 



the dale set by the pigeoners as that of the last 

 great migration. 



Efforts have been made to account for the 

 supposed sudden disapi)earance of the Pigeons 

 by tales of cyclonic sea disturbances or lake 

 storms, which are supposed to have drowned 

 practically all of them. Undoubtedly thousands 

 of Pigeons were destroyed occasionally, during 

 their flights, by storms or fogs at sea or on the 

 Great Lakes. There are many rather unsatis- 

 factory and hazy reports of such occurrences. 

 The earliest of these is recorded by Kalm, who 

 says, in his account of the Passenger Pigeon, that 

 in March, 1740, about a week after the disap- 

 pearance of a great multitude of Pigeons in 

 Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a sea captain 

 named Amies, who arrived at Philadelphia, 

 stated that he had seen the sea covered with dead 

 Pigeons, in some cases for three French miles. 

 Other ship captains, arriving later, corroborated 

 this tale. It was said that from that date no 

 such great multitudes of Pigeons were seen in 

 Pennsylvania. Kalm published this in 1759, but 

 after that date the Pigeons again came to Penn- 

 sylvania in great numbers ; which shows that the 

 drowning of this multitude had no permanent 

 effect on the numbers of the birds. This story in 

 some form has cropped up at intervals ever since. 



Schoolcraft (1821), while walking along 

 some parts of the shore of Lake Michigan, saw 

 a great number of the skeletons and half-con- 

 sumed bodies of Pigeons, which he says are over- 

 taken often by tempests in crossing the lake, 

 and " drowned in entire flocks." Vast numbers 

 of Eagles and Buzzards were seen feeding upon 

 them. 



Some of the Pigeons may have been driven by 

 persecution to the Far North to breed, in the lat- 

 ter part of the nineteenth century, and they may 

 have been destroyed by unseasonable storms, for 

 many species are subject to periodical reduction 

 by the elements ; but the whole history of the 

 last thirty years of the existence of the Pas- 

 senger Pigeon goes to prove that the birds were 

 so persistently molested that they finally lost 

 their coherence, were scattered far and wide, 

 and became extinct mainly through constant 

 persecution by man. While they existed in large 

 colonies, the orphaned young were taken care of 

 by their neighbors. This communal habit of 

 feeding preserved the species so long as the birds 

 nested in large colonies ; but when they became 

 scattered the young starved when their parents 

 were killed. 



The Passenger Pigeon was not a suspicious 

 bird, as birds go : it was easily taken. It 



