6 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
The Passenger Pigeon’s Last Stand 
By C. W. G. EIFRIG 
THE WRITER has hesitated twenty years to write this, often accusing himself 
of cowardice for holding back actual observations which in the interest of 
biological truth should be made known. Having now retired into the 
quietude of a Florida village he musters up enough courage to wade into it. 
Nearly all books on birds state that the last passenger pigeon died in 
the zoological garden of Cincinnati in 1914. The writer has seen one shortly 
before and two after that time. Lest anyone raise the cry, mourning dove, 
I would say that I have lived nearly all my life in what I may call the 
companionship of mourning doves, so that I know them thoroughly. 
Secondly, for years before the happenings narrated here I had a well- 
mounted pair of passenger pigeons in my collection of mounted birds, which 
I saw daily, so that I was thoroughly familiar with their appearance. 
Experience number one: The middle of April, 1911, found me in the 
neighborhood of Cowling, Edwards County, Illinois. This is near Mount 
Carmel, where Ridgway spent his adolescent years, and also near Olney, 
where he died. This region still is a paradise for birds; the Wabash flows 
not far away, and the Embarass (pr. Angbraw), a tributary of it, crosses 
the section I have in mind. Among others I here became well acquainted 
with Bachman’s sparrow, which is common in this region. While walking 
about here on April 10, two birds flew over me in rapid flight and lit on a 
wire about fifty feet ahead of me. Getting my glasses on them, I was 
dumbfounded to see a passenger pigeon and beside it a mourning dove. 
There was no mistaking the larger one, both as to size and color, reinforced 
by the fact that the smaller one had obligingly perched by the side of it. 
After allowing close inspection for a few minutes they flew away without 
alighting again as far as the eye could follow them. There was much virgin 
timber in the river bottoms here, including beech, the favorite of the 
pigeons, and sweet and sour gum. 
Experience number two: On the first of May, 1923, about 5:30 o’clock 
in the afternoon, I’ was returning with a number of students from a nature 
walk along the Desplaines River in River Forest, Cook County, Illinois. 
Suddenly one of the boys said “What bird is that?” Quickly looking in 
the direction to which he pointed I saw a bird as large as a Cooper’s hawk 
flying low, about as high as our heads, twenty-five feet away from us, 
parallel to the direction in which we were going. I immediately said 
“Cooper’s hawk.” All I could see in that fraction of a second was its size, 
the bluish back and the swift flight. A little distance ahead of us it sud- 
denly and rapidly swerved upward and lit in the top of a sizable cottonwood. 
Trying to verify my hurried identification we approached cautiously; I 
got my glass on it—and received the greatest shock in my life, for there 
were the thin, small, daintily sculptured head and neck of a pigeon. I told 
the boys to go on while I remained on the spot. I eyed the bird intently 
and intensively with my Zeiss 8x30 binoculars. After a few minutes the 
bird flew into a smaller catalpa where I had an even better chance to inspect 
