50 THE <AUDUBON BULLETS 

Passing of the Passenger 
Pigeon 
By H. P. IJAMS 
HE passing of the passenger pigeon represents one of the saddest 
pages in the history of the bird life in this country. More interest 
is evidenced in its history and its fate than in that of any other 
North American bird. Its story reads like romance. Once the most 
abundant species, ever known in any country, ranging over the greater 
part of this continent from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada in flocks so 
great that they hid the face of the sun, it has vanished from the face of 
the earth, leaving us only a few mute specimens in museums and private 
collections to remind us of its sad end and to serve as a warning of what 
happens when no thought is given to the preservation of wild life. 
The first settlers in this country found the passenger pigeon in infinite 
numbers. They provided a source of food for the Indians. Wherever 
roosts were established Indians always gathered in great numbers. 
Early historians speak of flocks of them so great that they broke down 
trees in the woods where they roosted. Early settlers in Virginia found 
the pigeons “beyond number or imagination.” Their flights in migration 
extended over vast tracts of country. A continuous stream of pigeons, 
three miles wide, that it took three days to pass a given point, was ob- 
served as late as 1860. Audubon and Alexander Wilson, the father of 
American ornithology, recording instances of observing the flights of 
more than 2,000,000,000 pigeons in one flock. These birds traveled at a 
rate of a mile a minute and the light of noonday was often obscured as by 
an eclipse. 
The migrations of these birds was not the regular, long-drawn-out 
movements that characterized the sensational flights of most birds. 
They were undertaken chiefly in search of food which consisted mainly 
of wild berries, nuts, insects and grain. They were so swift and tireless 
in flight that they could pass from zone to zone ina day. They migrated 
en masse. That is, the birds of one great nesting rose into the air as one 
body, and the movement of these immense hosts formed the most won- 
derful and impressive spectacle in animated nature. 
There were stirring sights when great herds of grazing animals thun- 
dered over the western plains, but the approach of the mighty armies ot 
the air was appalling. The vast multitudes, rising strata upon strata, 
covered and darkened the sky, hiding the sun, while the roar of their 
myriad wings was likened to that of a hurricane. Thus they passed for 
hours or days, while the people in the territory over which the pigeons 
winged their way kept up a fusillade from every point of vantage. 
