460 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



offered have been published widely in the press of the United 

 States and Canada, and a great public interest in the search 

 has been aroused. Passenger Pigeons have been reported in 

 numbers from many parts of North America, but investiga- 

 tion of these communications has not resulted in producing 

 so much as a feather of the bird. This merely shows the unre- 

 liability of such statements, and how easily people may be 

 mistaken. There are three reports in 1911 that seem prom- 

 ising. In each case a single bird was seen and watched for 

 some time at very close range; but all assertions regarding 

 large flocks at this late date probably are based on observations 

 of Mourning Doves or Band-tailed Pigeons. The only Pas- 

 senger Pigeon now (1911) known to exist is the lone captive 

 whose likeness faces page 433. 



A 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 abun- 

 dant 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 specimens taken in the last decade of the 

 nineteenth 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 Au Sable River in Michigan 

 in 1896. In 1898 a flock of about two hundred 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 

 twenty to twenty-flve years after the date set by the pigeoners 

 as that of the last great migration. 



Such records as I find of the last specimens actually taken 

 (not merely seen) in the States to which they refer indicate 

 how the species finally dropped out of sight: — 



