THE PASSENGER PIGEON 
By EDWARD HOWE FORBUSH 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 6 
The Passenger Pigeon undoubtedly was one of the greatest zoological 
wonders of the world. Formerly the most abundant gregarious bird 
ever known in any land, ranging over the greater part of North America 
in innumerable hosts, it has disappeared to the last bird. Many persons 
now living have seen its vast and apparently illimitable hordes marshaled 
in the sky, have viewed great forest roosting-places broken by their 
clustering millions as by a hurricane, and have seen markets overcrowded 
to the sidewalks with barrels of dead birds. Those Extinction 
who have witnessed the passing of the Pigeons find it incredible 
hard to believe that all the millions of individuals of 
this elegant species could have been wiped off the face of the earth. 
Nevertheless this is just what has occurred. 
John Josselyn, in his Two Voyages to New England, published in 
1672, describes the vast numbers of these pigeons and says: “But of late 
they are much diminished, the English taking them with nets.” 
This seems to indicate that the extirpation of the species began within 
forty years after the first settlement of New England, and exhibits the 
net as one of the chief causes of depletion. From soon after the first 
occupancy of New England by Europeans until about the year 1895, the 
netting of the Passenger Pigeon in North America never ceased. Thou- 
sands of nets were spread all along the Atlantic seaboard ; they were set 
wherever Pigeons appeared, but there were no great markets for them 
to supply until the nineteenth century. Early in that century the markets 
were often so glutted with pigeons that the birds could not be sold at any 
price. Schooners were loaded in bulk with them on the Hudson River 
for the New York market, and later, as cities grew up along the shores 
of the Great Lakes, vessels were loaded with them 
there ; but all this slaughter had no perceptible effect 
on the numbers of the Pigeons in the West until rail- 
roads were built throughout that country, and the demand of a rapidly 
increasing population stimulated the netters. 
Wherever the Wild Pigeon nested the pioneers soon found them, and 
destroyed most of the young in the nests and many of the adult birds as 
well. Every great market from St. Louis to Boston received hundreds 
or thousands of barrels of Pigeons every season. The New York market 
sometimes took one hundred barrels a day without a break in the price. 
Often a single western town near the nesting-grounds sent millions of 
pigeons to the market during the nesting-season, as was shown by the 
shipping-records. 
Wholesale 
Slaughter 
