22 
FOREST AND STREAM 
THE FUTURE OF THE DUCKS 
A MAN WHO SAW A BILLION PIGEONS 
GO THINKS IT IS ABOUT TIME TO ASK 
By E. T. Martin. 
W HEN people talk of the hundreds 
of millions of pigeons existing 
during the seventies, they fail to 
realize the fact that these birds were far 
less in number than waterfowl, although 
one high in authority writes: “It may be 
doubted if in the prime days of this pigeon 
its numbers were ever equalled by any 
bird in the Old World or the New.” With 
this I do not agree. The pigeons at nest¬ 
ing time always bunched up in one or two 
great bodies and being land birds were 
more easy to see, more readily counted or 
their number estimated than the ducks 
which were everywhere. Didn’t I myself 
assist in taking a census of the pigeons in 
the great Crooked River nesting and didn’t 
the “board of enumerators’’ counting the 
nests on one acre and multiplying the re¬ 
sult by the total number of acres, decide 
that there was about a billion of birds in 
the nesting? This after the first laying 
was finished and the squabs out. With 
this to go by it is reasonable to suppose 
that those naturalists who estimated the 
number of pigeons existing in the early 
days of the country at more than two bil¬ 
lion were not far off in their guess. Now 
if a “pent-up Utica” of less than fifty, 
possibly not more than thirty square miles 
contained a billion of pigeons, which was 
about all there were in existence, how 
about the ducks scattered from Canada to 
the Gulf of Mexico, densely populating 
lakes and marshes, a single one of which 
was of more extended area than this great¬ 
est of pigeon nestings? 
I have seen during a migration north¬ 
ward more waterfowl than the out-flight 
of pigeons when the Crooked River nest¬ 
ing broke. Besides the one I saw, which 
was along the Kankakee and Great Lakes, 
there was another up the Mississippi said 
to be heavier than the one already men¬ 
tioned and yet one more on the Pacific 
coast containing as many birds as either 
of the others, not to mention the birds 
which, preferring east to west, made their 
journeyings along the Atlantic seaboard and 
the Chesapeake. Would it not therefore 
be safe to say there were ten times as 
many of the ducks as of the pigeons? 
This estimate is rather borne out by a 
statement of the chief of the United States 
Biological Survey who in “American Game 
Birds” says, “The Louisiana State Game 
Preserve offers sanctuary to billions of 
migratory waterfowl every year.” Bil¬ 
lions? Well, I don’t know. A billion is a 
lot more than one man can eat in a day 
and if “billions” now “find sanctuary” in 
one place, what was the grand total fifty 
years ago ? Certainly many more than 
the ten billion of my estimate. I am in¬ 
clined to think millions should be read in¬ 
stead of billions and even “millions” is 
a good many, but in those early days! 
“Who can number the sands of the sea¬ 
shore or the stars of Heaven?”—and the 
waterfowl are like unto them in number. 
A person who has never stayed with them, 
nor watched their migrations, can form no 
adequate idea of the vastness of their 
quantities nor even can I do more than 
guess. I who have slept with the pigeons 
and almost grown feathers and web feet 
besides learning their language through 
months and years spent among the ducks. 
Now this is what I would like to know: 
If with tens of thousands of square miles 
reclaimed that once besides growing food 
for the waterfowl furbished shelter and 
places for their nests; with the beech and 
oak woods leveled and little “mast” for 
ducks or pigeons; with the whole country 
settled up and even the banks of Crooked 
River and Lake dotted with summer re¬ 
sorts and several sizeable towns located 
where in 1878 the cream-colored king of 
the pigeons led his people to the largest 
nesting of which we have any record in 
the history of the world, what would hap¬ 
pen if the game was as numerous now as 
in the sixties and seventies plus a reason¬ 
able natural increase? Where would the 
pigeons and the waterfowl find food to 
eat, or place to rest their wearied bodies? 
Before any considerable amount of re¬ 
clamation was done I have seen the spring- 
ducks come from Southland so poor that 
instead of falling when shot like good 
fat birds do, they would be almost blown 
away after the manner of feathers, and 
their breast bones, more in evidence than 
any other parts of their bodies, nearly pro¬ 
truding through the skin. If this was so 
before the swamps of the middle west and 
south had been reclaimed, before the lakes 
and bottoms along the Mississippi and in 
Indiana and Illinois had been drained, how 
would it be now? Hunger knows no fear. 
Would not the birds quarter themselves on 
the farmers’ land and eat as long as any¬ 
thing eatable remained? Mind you, I am 
not trying to condone the slaughter of 
game either now or in the past, but aiming 
to show how Old Mother Nature, sitting 
on the safety valve, regulates things. 
In the long ago I have seen an 80-acre 
field of corn ruined in a few nights by 
hungry waterfowl. Have shot mallards 
and teal and pintail on the Minnesota stub¬ 
ble, lying to a dog as well as do grouse. 
And the only reason they were on the 
stubble instead of in the growing grain 
was because the farmer had beaten them 
to it. 
With as few ducks as there are at pres¬ 
ent they are causing the rice growers of 
California a very considerable loss, pre^ 
ferring tame rice to wild, the product of 
civilization ready at hand to what they 
must hustle for in the marshes. And this 
with food a-plenty in the baited ponds 
and about their usual places of resort. 
There are two sides to every question 
and the conservationists of a certain class 
lose sight of the game question from this 
point of view and forget if the many bil¬ 
lion birds of the past were extant they 
Not Game Birds Exactly, But See What Nature Will Do When Left Alone. 
