DertGeeAeUeDru BON BUG E.T IN 21 
The wings were long and pointed. The plumage was unusually beautiful, 
being generally grey-blue above, and reddish-fawn below. The lower throat, 
chest, and sides of the adult male were a bright orange. 
The normal range of the Passenger Pigeon was all over the central 
and eastern part of the United States, and the central and eastern part of 
southern Canada. The normal breeding range was in Michigan, Indiana, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, southern Wisconsin, northern Kentucky, 
all of New England except for northern Maine, the southern part of On- 
tario, and the northern part of Illinois, including Chicago. 
The Passenger Pigeon ate a wide variety of foods. About 90% of its diet 
was vegetable. Its most important foods were beechnuts and acorns. Beech- 
nuts were considered to be the favorite food. The Passenger Pigeon also ate 
many other foods of lesser importance, including chestnuts, pine seeds, 
hemlock, elm, and birch seeds, berries of many kinds, and wild rice. 
Cherries became an important food source in the fall of the year. The birds 
ate many kinds of cultivated grains, corn, and peas, sometimes doing serious 
damage to farms. The animal portion of their diet included worms, snails, 
and a wide variety of insects. The Passenger Pigeon had an enormous 
appetite, since it spent a great deal of time moving from place to place. A 
large flock of pigeons would frequently clean an area of food so thorroughly 
that other wildlife was forced to move to another location to find food. 
It is generally agreed that the destruction of the vast eastern forests 
of the United States began the decline of the Passenger Pigeon. The great 
beech and oak forests that had provided most of the food and nesting sites 
for the birds were leveled by the early settlers. As the United States 
gradually expanded westward, the range of the Passenger Pigeon was also 
pushed farther and farther west to unsettled lands. The early settlers also 
brought domesticated animals to the frontier. These animals, particularly 
pigs, competed with the pigeons for beech and oak mast. 
The Passenger Pigeon, having a delicate flavor, was widely shot for 
food. This was made easy by the habit of the pigeons to travel in huge, 
tightly packed flocks as they migrated and searched for food. A hundred 
or more birds were sometimes brought down by a single shotgun blast 
into the flock. Most of these were injured, and would be killed later. 
The pigeons were most vulnerable in their nesting and roosting areas. 
There is a record of a nesting site in Michigan that was 40 miles long and 
six miles wide. Over a hundred nests could be found in a single tree. The 
ground around the nesting site would be strewn with broken branches, 
eggs, and dead squabs after the birds had left. 
The birds in their roosting sites were often so crowded together that 
branches 2 feet in diameter would collapse from the weight of the pigeons. 
It was unsafe to enter some roosting places at night because of falling 
branches. A great many trees in the roosting area would be killed. The 
ground after a roosting was sometimes covered with a foot-thick layer of 
dung. The Pasenger Pigeon was quite unafraid of man, and could be ap- 
proached easily. In nesting periods, for example, older birds could almost 
be touched before taking flight. The pigeons became more wary of man 
