A Pigeon of the Past

Can you name an endangered species? Today we are very careful and concerned about the plants, animals, fish and birds that might become extinct. Years ago, most people did not realize that a whole species could disappear from the face of the earth.

Imagine what it was like to live 150 years ago. There were very few large towns in Wisconsin and most of the land was covered with trees. If you were to take a walk in these woods, you might be started by a loud rustling overhead and look up to see a flock of birds. These were birds you could not see anywhere today. This bird was slightly larger than a morning dove. It had a long tail and a blue head and back. Its wings were green and purple and it had red eyes. This bird was called a passenger pigeon.

The word passenger comes from an Italian word meaning "wanderer" or "one who passes from place to place." The pigeons traveled in large flocks and during part of the year they migrated to the place where they would nest. They traveled hundreds of miles in one day and flew as fast as 60 miles per hour. When they found a place to nest, they all settled into trees and the flock of pigeons may have covered an area as large as 100 miles long and up to ten miles wide. In the 1500's there were three to five billion passenger pigeons living in North America. When a flock flew overhead, the sky was dark and their flapping wings sounded like a terrible storm.

Many passenger pigeons nested in Wisconsin every year. Large flocks came to an area around Briggsville. When they arrived and settled into the forests, people were there to greet them. For many years, Indians had been hunting the pigeons for food. In the 1800's others began to hunt them too. Unfortunately, the hunters did not shoot just enough to eat, as the Indians had. Shooting and killing the passenger pigeons had become like a sport, and the birds were being killed by the thousands. They were packaged in barrels and shipped all over the country by railroad. In the late 1800's, one shipment carried almost one and a half million birds.

Before many people realized it, the passenger pigeon was disappearing. Some people gave warnings because several other bird species were disappearing, too. A law was passed in 1875 that made shooting the passenger pigeon illegal but it was already too late. The last pigeon ever seen in Wisconsin was shot in 1900 at Babcock. The only remaining bird was kept in a zoo until 1914, but when it died, so did the entire species of passenger pigeons.

Sources: Leopold, Aldo, Sand County Almanac, Oxford U. Press. 1949; Wisconsin's Environment--Badger History series, Madison,WI:, State Historical Society, Nov. 1970.