84 Bird - Lore 



the Manistee River, and near Sheffield, in Warren County, Pennsylvania. 

 The descriptions of these nestings by the pigeoners yield sufficient data to 

 compute their population which, counting five nests per tree, and reducing 

 the figures given by one-third, reaches a total of some 50,000,000. It is known 

 that the Manistee flock, protected by an almost inaccessible forest remote 

 from transportation, escaped destruction. Not so the rookeries of Sheffield 

 and Petosky. From these two localities there were shipped during the season, 

 that is from April to September, some 30,000,000 birds. Thus culminated 

 the relentless persecution of many years in a barbarous massacre where per- 

 ished the last of the great flights, and which doomed the shattered and sur- 

 viving remainder. 



After the slaughter of 1878, the now utterly disorganized and terror- 

 stricken flocks continued to resort to the breeding range in yet considerable 

 numbers. In 1880, millions of birds passed over Tawas going westward, and 

 a colony of some 10,000 bred in Benzie County. The last known nesting of 

 importance took place near Grand Traverse in the year following. This final 

 stronghold, some eight miles in length, probably sheltered more than 1,000,000 

 Pigeons. Some 20,000 birds were taken here, to be butchered within a week 

 during a trap-shooting tournament at Coney Island, New York. Breeding flocks 

 of a few hundred individuals appeared in later years. In the spring of 1888, 

 large flocks and many small ones passed over Cadillac, Michigan, and departed 

 forever from the sovereign state, which failed them in their hour of need. 



Hand in hand with the extermination of the breeding hosts went that of 

 the wintering flocks, of which no records seem to have been made. A ship- 

 ment of several hundred dozens of birds, in 1893, marks their ultimate dis- 

 appearance here. A pitiful remnant, some fifty in all, lingered for a few sub- 

 sequent years in southwestern Missouri. 



A small number of birds outlived the dissolution of the last flocks. Dis- 

 persed in couples, in bands of five or more, or as solitary individuals, these 

 were sighted at rare intervals throughout the former breeding range during 

 the nineties. A dozen or so bred near the headwaters of the Au Sable River 

 in 1896. It is the last known nesting. With the beginning of the new cen- 

 tury trustworthy records cease, and there is but little doubt that its first years 

 witnessed the passing away of the hapless descendants of a favored race. 



Down in the pleasant valley of the Ohio, amidst patriarchs of the forest 

 primeval, lives to this day a captive and lonely daughter of her gentle tribe, 

 and its sole relict, awaiting the final summons which comes to all that breathe. 



