Passenger Pigeon {Ectopistes migratorius) 



Range: Bred formerly from middle western Mackenzie, central Keewatin, 

 central Quebec, and Nova Scotia south to Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and 

 New York; wintered principally from Arkansas and North Carolina south to 

 central Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. 



On September 1, 1914, aged twenty years, departed this life the sole surviv- 

 ing passenger pigeon. This brief obituary records the disappearance from earth 

 not only of the last survivor of a notable American game bird, but what is in- 

 finitely sadder, the passing of a species. The history of the passenger pigeon 

 from the first settlement to and including our own times reads like a romance, 

 but a romance tinged on every page with man's cruelty, rapacity, and short- 

 sightedness. Early accounts of the enormous numbers of this pigeon that 

 migrated from section to section read like fables, but they are too well attested 

 t-o be doubted. Wood's account of the passenger pigeon (1629-34) is so quaint 

 I subjoin part of it: 



"These Birds come into the Countrey, to goe to the North parts in the 

 beginning of our Spring, at which time (if I may be counted worthy to be believed 

 in a thing that is not so strange as true) I have scene them fly as if the Ayerie 

 regiment had beene Pigeons ; seeing neither beginning nor ending, length or 

 breadth of these Millions of Millions." 



Audubon states that he rode through a winter roosting-place in Kentucky 

 which was more than forty miles long and three miles wide. It may be doubted 

 if in the prime days of this pigeon its numbers were ever equaled by any other 

 bird, either in the Old World or the New. Only its great numbers enabled it to 

 survive the assaults of its enemies as long as it did. Then came the market uetter, 

 and everywhere the hapless pigeons were taken in season and out of season, with 

 eggs in their bodies ready for the nest and with nests full of young. While 

 neither the netter nor the sportsman is responsible for the extermination of the 

 last passenger pigeon, it is nevertheless true that by the combined assaults of the 

 two, the species was reduced to such a low ebb that it could not recover. Pro- 

 tective legislation was too late. 



737 



