![]() Even though my wife, Morgen, is an endless fount of interesting topics, when she suggested that I write about passenger pigeons, my first reaction was a yawn. John (Ectopistes migratorius (passenger pigeon) 5), via Wikimedia Commons Scientists are trying to bring the passenger pigeon back.Image credit: By James St. Hunting, also, may have done the species in they went from huge numbers to extinct in just 40 years. Deforestation and the boom-and-bust availability of its food were factors in the bird’s extinction. Sadly, it was too little, too late the last passenger pigeon seen in the wild was shot that year. To-day a standing reward of $300 is offered to any person who can show a nesting pair of these birds." … The wild pigeon fifty years was so common in the United States that during migratory periods the flocks that crossed the country sometimes dulled the sun from the view of the man below. "Unless the State and Federal Governments come to the rescue of American game, plumed and song birds, the not distant future will witness the practical extinction of some of the most beautiful and valuable species. In an article published on January 16, 1910, The New York Times announced that a “THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR REWARD Will Be Paid for a Nesting Pair of Wild Pigeons”: Passenger pigeon courtship rituals different from those of other pigeons.Ī slow decline in the mid-1800s was followed by a catastrophic decline, and by the late 1800s, it was unusual to see a passenger pigeon in the wild. 134) says: ‘They make a sound resembling the croaking of wood-frogs.’” 8. … resembles the kah-of-excitement also in that it is often followed immediately by other notes, such as the coo,” and “Scolding, Chattering, Clucking represent the wide variations of this most characteristic and frequent utterance of the Passenger Pigeon. It is generally given singly, but sometimes two or more in succession with but, short pause between. ![]() so far as it can be said to have any pitch at all. He described five vocalizations, including a “unmusical” keck that was “loud, sometimes very loud, harsh, and rather high-pitched. “But tell him to look for a pigeon that shrieks and chatters and clucks instead of cooing, and the boy will be less likely to make a mistake.” “If you tell a boy to look for a bird of the same general appearance as the Mourning Dove but larger, he will be sure to mistake some large-appearing Mourning Dove for the Passenger Pigeon,” Craig wrote. What scientific descriptions we do have come from birds in an aviary, described by Wallace Craig in 1911. When passenger pigeons roosted, they could shear the limbs off trees.Īside from the “ near-deafening noise” of nesting colonies, little is known about the vocalizations of wild passenger pigeons. The female, he notes, has a “cinereous brown upper part of the neck inclining to ash the spot of changeable gold green and carmine much less, and not so brilliant tail-coverts brownish slate naked or bits slate coloured in all other respects like the male in colour, but less vivid, and more tinged with brown the eye not so brilliant an orange.” 5. ![]() "ill black nostril covered by a high rounding protuberance eye brilliant fiery orange orbit, or space surrounding it, purplish flesh-coloured skin head, upper part of the neck, and chin, a fine slate blue, lightest on the chin throat, breast and sides, as far as the thighs, a reddish hazel lower part of the neck and sides of the same resplendent changeable gold, green and purplish crimson, the latter most predominant the ground colour slate the plumage of this part is of a peculiar structure, ragged at the ends belly and vent white lower part of the breast fading into a pale vinaceous red thighs the same, legs and feet lake, seamed with white back, rump and tail-coverts, dark slate, spotted on the shoulders with a few scattered marks of black the scapulars tinged with brown greater coverts light slate primaries and secondaries dull black, the former tipt and edged with brownish white tail long, and greatly cunei form, all the feathers tapering towards the point, the two mid dle ones plain deep black, the other five, on each side, hoary white, lightest near the tips, deepening into bluish near the bases, where each is crossed on the inner vane with a broad spot of black, and nearer the root with another of ferruginous pri maries edged with white bastard wing black." In the 1829 book American Ornithology, Alexander Wilson describes the males in great detail: Biospanersity Heritage Library, Flickr // Public Domain ![]()
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