CHAPTER VI 

 The Passenger Pigeon 



From "Life Histories of North American Birds," * 

 by Charles Bendire 



GEOGRAPHICAL Range: Deciduous forest 

 regions of eastern North America; west, casu- 

 ally, to Washington and Nevada; Cuba. 

 The breeding range of the Passenger Pigeon to-day- 

 is to be looked for principally in the thinly settled and 

 wooded region along our northern border, from north- 

 ern Maine westward to northern Minnesota; in the 

 Dakotas, as well as in similar localities in the eastern 

 and middle portions of the Dominion of Canada, and 

 north at least to Hudson's Bay. Isolated and scattering 

 pairs probably still breed in the New England States, 

 northern New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wis- 

 consin, Minnesota, and a few other localities further 

 south, but the enormous breeding colonies, or pigeon 

 roosts, as they were formerly called, frequently covering 

 the forest for miles, and so often mentioned by natural- 



*The first volume of Captain Bendire's monumental work was pub- 

 lished in 1892, by which time the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon was 

 foretold as a matter of a few more years. His contribution to the subject 

 therefore deals with a much later period in the history of the bird and links 

 the studies of Wilson and Audubon with the present day. 



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