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Title: The Passenger Pigeon
Author: Various
Editor: W. B. Mershon
Release Date: January 22, 2014 [eBook #44729]
Language: English
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THE PASSENGER PIGEON
[Illustration: PASSENGER PIGEON (_Columba Migratoria_)
Upper bird, male; lower, female]
THE PASSENGER PIGEON
by
W. B. MERSHON
[Illustration: Publisher's Logo]
New York The Outing Publishing Company 1907
Copyright, 1907, by W B Mershon
The Outing Press Deposit, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction ix
I My Boyhood Among the Pigeons 1
II The Passenger Pigeon 9
_From "American Ornithology," by Alexander Wilson_
III The Passenger Pigeon 25
_From "Ornithological Biography," by John James Audubon_
IV As James Fenimore Cooper Saw It 41
V The Wild Pigeon of North America 48
_By Chief Pokagon, in "The Chautauquan"_
VI The Passenger Pigeon 60
_From "Life Histories of North American Birds,"
by Charles Bendire_
VII Netting the Pigeons 74
_By William Brewster, in "The Auk"_
VIII Efforts to Check the Slaughter 77
_By Prof. H. B. Roney_
IX The Pigeon Butcher's Defense 93
_By E. T. Martin, in "American Field"_
X Notes of a Vanished Industry 105
XI Recollections of "Old Timers" 119
XII The Last of the Pigeons 141
XIII What Became of the Wild Pigeon? 163
_By Sullivan Cook, in "Forest and Stream"_
XIV A Novel Theory of Extinction 173
_By C. H. Ames and Robert Ridgway_
XV News from John Burroughs 179
XVI The Pigeon in Manitoba 186
_By George E. Atkinson_
XVII The Passenger Pigeon in Confinement 200
_By Ruthven Deane, in "The Auk"_
XVIII Nesting Habits of the Passenger Pigeon 209
_By Dr. Morris Gibbs, in "The Oölogist"_
XIX Miscellaneous Notes 217
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Passenger Pigeon _Frontispiece_
_By Louis Agassiz Fuertes_
FACING PAGE
Audubon Plate (_color_) 24
Passenger Pigeon and Mourning Dove 88
Fac-simile of "Among the Pigeons" 92
H. T. Phillip's Store 104
Band-tailed Pigeon (_color_) 130
Comparative Size of Pigeon and Dove 156
Young Passenger Pigeon 198
Pigeon Net 218
INTRODUCTION
For the last three years I have spent most of my leisure time in
collecting as much material as possible which might help to throw light
on the oft-repeated query, "What has become of the wild pigeons?" The
result of this labor of love is scarcely more than a compilation, and
I am under many obligations to those who have so cheerfully assisted
me. I have given them credit by name in connection with their various
contributions, but I wish that I might have been able to give them the
more finished and literary setting that would have been within the
reach of a trained writer or scientist. I am merely a business man who
is interested in the Passenger Pigeon because he loves the outdoors and
its wild things, and sincerely regrets the cruel extinction of one of
the most interesting natural phenomena of his own country. If I have
been able to make a compilation that otherwise would not have been
available for the interested reader, I need make no further apologies
for the imperfect manner of my treatment of this subject.
It is hard for us of an older generation to realize that as recently as
1880 the Passenger Pigeon was thronging in countless millions through
large areas of the Middle West, and that in our boyhood we could find
no exaggeration in the records of such earlier observers as Alexander
Wilson, the ornithologist, who said that these birds associated in
such prodigious numbers as almost to surpass belief, and that their
numbers had no parallel among any other feathered tribes on the face
of the earth; or that one of their "roosts" would kill the trees over
thousands of acres as completely as if the whole forest had been
girdled with an ax.
Audubon estimated that an average flock of these pigeons contained a
billion and a quarter of birds, which consumed more than eight and a
half million bushels of mast in a day's feeding. They were slain by
millions during the middle of the last century, and from one region in
Michigan in one year three million Passenger Pigeons were killed for
market, while in that roost alone as many more perished because of the
barbarous methods of hunting them. They supplied a means of living for
thousands of hunters, who devastated their flocks with nets and guns,
and even with fire. Yet so vast were their numbers that after thirty
years of observation Audubon was able to say that "even in the face
of such dreadful havoc nothing but the diminution of our forests can
accomplish their decrease."
Many theories have been advanced to account for the disappearance
of the wild pigeons, among them that their migration may have been
overwhelmed by some cyclonic disturbance of the atmosphere which
destroyed their myriads at one blow. The big "nesting" of 1878 in
Michigan was undoubtedly the last large migration, but the pigeons
continued to nest infrequently in Michigan and the North for several
years after that, and until as late as 1886 they were trapped for
market or for trap-shooting. Therefore the pigeons did not become
extinct in a day; nor did one tremendous catastrophe wipe them from the
face of the earth. They gradually became fewer and existed for twenty
years or more after the date set as that of the final extermination.
At one time the wild pigeons covered the entire north from the Gaspé
Peninsula to the Red River of the North. Separate nestings and flights
were of regular yearly occurrence over this vast eastern and northern
expanse. Gradually civilization, molestation and warfare drove them
from the Atlantic seaboard west, until Michigan was their last grand
rendezvous, in which region their mighty hosts congregated for the
final grand nesting in 1878. As late as 1845 they were quite numerous
on the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec, but disappeared from there about that
time.
The habits of the birds were such that they could not thrive singly
nor in small bodies, but were dependent upon one another, and vast
communities were necessary to their very existence, while an enormous
quantity of food was necessary for their sustenance. The cutting off
of the forests and food supply interfered with their plan of existence
and drove them into new localities, and the ever increasing slaughter
could not help but lessen their once vast numbers.
The Passenger Pigeon laid only one egg in its nest, rarely two, and
although it bred three or four times a year it could not replenish the
numbers slaughtered by the professional netters. Undoubtedly millions
of the birds perished at various periods along the Great Lakes country,
becoming confused in foggy weather and dropping from exhaustion into
the water, while snow and sleet storms at times caused great mortality
among the young birds, and even among the old ones, which often arrived
in the North before winter had passed.
The history of the buffalo is repeated in that of the wild pigeon, the
extermination of which was inspired by the same motive: the greed of
man and the pursuit of the almighty dollar. We lock the barn door after
the horse is stolen. Our white pine forests and timber lands in general
have been wantonly destroyed with no thought for the future. The
American people are wasteful. They are just beginning to learn the need
of economy in the use of that which Nature has flung at their feet.
When one recalls the destruction of that noble animal, the buffalo,
frequently for nothing else than so-called sport, or the removal of
a robe; when one thinks of the burning of forest trees which took
centuries to grow, merely to clear a piece of land to raise crops, it
is not to be wondered at that the wild pigeon, insignificant, and not
even classed as a game bird, so soon became extinct.
The Passenger Pigeon
CHAPTER I
My Boyhood Among the Pigeons
My boyhood was made active and wholesome by a love for outdoor pastimes
that had been bred in me by generations of sport-loving ancestors. From
which side of the genealogical tree this ardor for field and forest and
open sky had come with stronger influence I cannot say. While my father
was the one to use the fowling-piece and cast the fly for the glorious
speckled trout, my mother was a willing conspirator, for it was she
who packed the lunch basket, often called us for the start in the gray
morning, and went along to "hold the horse" while we shot pigeons. And
when we were bent on a day in the woods in bracing October weather she
drove old Dolly sedately along the winding trail, while I hunted one
side of the woods and father hunted the other. On such days we were
after partridges, of course, ruffed grouse, the king of all game birds.
Often mother marked them down and told us just where they had crossed
the road, or whether the bird was hit, for the cloud of smoke from the
old black powder made seeing guesswork on our part. She loved the dogs,
too, those good old friends and workers, Sport, Bob, and Ranger.
I remember calling my mother to a window early one morning and
shouting: "See there! a flock of pigeons! Ah, ha! April fool!" This
time I did not deceive her with the threadbare trick. The joke was "on
me" for once. There was a flight of pigeons that morning, the first
one of the season, and behind the foremost flock another and another
came streaming. Away from the east side of the river at the north of
the town, from near Crow Island, they swept like a cloud. Crossing
the river to the west they reached the woods near Jerome's mill and
skirted the clearings or passed in waves over the tree tops, back of
John Winter's farm, and then wheeled to the south. Out of the tongue of
woodland, just back of the Hermansau Church, they poured, thence over
the fields, too high to be shot, and then away to the evergreens and
stately pines of Pine Hill; on, on, on across the Tittabawassee, to
some feeding ground we knew not how far away.
Now that the pigeons had come they would "fly" every morning. This we
knew from years of observation in the great migration belt of Michigan.
They would fly lower to-morrow morning, and in a day or two more sweep
low enough for the sixteen-gauge and the number eight shot to reach
them. Sometimes, even now, forty years after the last of the great
passenger pigeon flights, I fall to day-dreaming and seem to hear
myself saying in the eager, piping tones of those golden boyhood days:
"Mother, I am going for pigeons to-morrow morning! Do call me if I
oversleep. I must be awake by four o'clock. We'll have pigeon pot-pie
to-morrow. I'm going to bed early so as to be sure to be up by
daybreak. Old Sport is going along to 'fetch' dead birds."
"Hello, dad," cries a voice in my ear, "what are you up to? What are
you hustling around so for with your old shot pouch and powder-flask?
There's nothing to shoot this time of the year."
The spell is broken; my own boy fetches his daddy out of his dream,
and I am fairly caught in the act of making an old fool of myself. My
youngsters are counting the days before May first when I have promised
to take them trout-fishing, and the smallest boy found his first gun in
his stocking last Christmas. But they can know nothing at all about the
joys and excitement of pigeon shooting in the vanished days when these
birds fairly darkened the sky above our old homestead. But I try to
tell them what we used to do and my story sounds something like this:
"It is early in the spring, so early that a bunch of snow may yet
be found on the north side of the largest of the fallen trees in
the woods. Puddles that the melting snow left in the hollows of the
clearing are fringed with ice this morning, and we look around and tell
each other, 'There was a frost last night.' The mud in the road has
stiffened, and the rutted cattle tracks are also streaked and barred
with ice. Yet winter has gone and spring is here, for the buds are
swelling on the twigs of the elms and the pussy willows show their
dainty, silvery signals to tell us that the vernal equinox has come and
gone.
"If the springtime is still young, so is the day. Light is breaking
in the gray sky of dawn as we hurry along the slippery, sticky road.
We must make haste to the point of woods, by John Winter's clearing,
before full daybreak or the pigeons will be flying and we will miss the
early flocks which always keep nearest the ground.
"You may be curious to know what we look like as we trudge along in
Indian file, eagerly chatting about a kind of sport which this later
generation knows nothing about. I am a chunk of a country lad, topped
by a woolen cap with ear-tabs pulled down over my ears, a tippet around
my neck, yarn mittens on my hands, which are sure to be badly skinned
and chapped this time of year from playing 'knuckle-down-tight.'
"My 'every-day pants' are tucked into a pair of calf-skin boots with
square pieces of red leather for the tops, an old-fashioned adornment
dear to Young America of my day. My old Irish water spaniel 'Sport' is
tagging behind or charging frantically ahead; my gun is a sixteen-gauge
muzzle loader, stub and twist barrels, with dogs' heads for the hammers.
"Dangling from one shoulder is a leather shot pouch that cuts off
one ounce of number eights for a load. The sides of this pouch are
embossed, on the one a group of English woodcock, on the other a
setter rampant. Hanging at my left side by a green cord with a tassel
or two is my fluted copper powder flask, ready to measure out two and
three-fourths drams of coarse Dupont or Curtis & Harvey powder.
"My pockets are full of Ely's black-edged wads, for I am a young
nabob of sportsmen, let me tell you, and I scorn to use tow or bits
of newspaper for wadding. My vest pocket holds the caps, G. D.'s or
Ely's again, for didn't I tell you that I was a nabob. The _pièce de
résistance_ of this outfit is the game bag, the pride of my eye, for
it was a Christmas present, and this is its maiden shooting trip.
Suspended over the left shoulder so that it will hang well back of
the right hip, the strap that carries it is broad and with many holes
for the wondrous buckle which can be shifted to hang it in the most
comfortable place, wherever that is, for when it is loaded with game it
will choke me almost to death, no matter how I adjust it. This noble
bag has two pockets, one of them for luncheon, and on the outside is a
netted pocket, easy to get into and keeping the birds cool. I nearly
forgot to mention its magnificent fringe, which hangs down from both
sides and the bottom like the war-bags of an Indian chief.
"My companions are rigged out in much the same fashion. They are grown
men, however, for I don't remember any other boys who shot pigeons
with me. Holabird or khaki hunting suits are as yet unknown, and even
corduroy coats are rare. The powder horn is seen as often as the copper
flask, and one hunter has a shot belt with two compartments instead of
the English pouch. Of guns the assortment is as varied as the number of
hunters, but the old, hard-kicking army musket with its iron ramrod is
more popular than any other arm.
"We reach the edge of the clearing not a minute too soon. Now and then
a distant shot tells us that we are not the first hunters out afield
this morning. The guns are cracking everywhere along the road that
skirts the woodland, and back in, close to the 'chopping,' some better
wing-shots are posted by the openings into the woods where the birds
fly lower, but where the shooting is more difficult. It is largely
of the 'pick your bird' style, for the flight of a pigeon is very
swift, and when they are darting among the tree-tops of a small forest
opening, rare skill is required to bag one's birds.
"I prefer to take the flocks, even though they offer me more distant
targets, and soon my gun-barrels are as hot as those of the rest of the
skirmishers. Sometimes two or three birds drop from a flock at a single
discharge, and then several shots may not fetch from on high more than
one or two of the long tail-feathers spinning and twisting to the
ground. It is fascinating to watch the whirling, shining descent of one
of these feathers, and I pick up one and stick it in my cap as a matter
of habit.
"This kind of pigeon shooting takes a good gun and ammunition to kill
a big bag as we bang away at long range at the birds on their way to
the morning feeding-ground. The flight is over by half-past six o'clock
and I am home by seven o'clock ready for breakfast and then to scamper
off to school.
"The pigeons in this particular locality have followed the same routine
as long as I have known them. They only fly in the morning, always
going in the same direction, and I can't recall seeing them coming back
again, or flying later in the day. This habit holds until the young
squabs are in the nests in June, after which we are likely to find
pigeons almost anywhere, for their feeding grounds become scattered and
local.
"One thing that annoys me in these brave days of youth and sport is
the poacher, the low-down fellow who steals my birds. I am reckoned a
pretty good shot, and I have a first-rate gun, but I am only a boy, so
the pigeon thief thinks I am fair picking, and he saves his ammunition
by claiming every bird that drops anywhere near him.
"Another smart dodge of his is to fire into a flock ahead or behind
the one I am shooting at and then claim whatever birds fall as the
quarry of both our guns. If he is not too big I try to lick him, but
generally I have to submit to the rascality unless I can persuade a
grown-up friend to take my part. Sometimes these villains hang around
my shooting ground without any guns at all, and pick up as many birds
as I do. Then I hunt around for a father or an uncle to reinforce my
protests and there is a pretty row which ends in the interloper taking
to his heels to wait for a more propitious occasion.
"When we are ready to carry our birds home we pull out the four long
tail-feathers and knot them together at the tips. Then the quill ends
are stuck through the soft part of the lower mandible, and the birds
are strung together, eight or ten in a string. These strings are
bunched together by tying the quill ends of the feathers, and we have
our game festooned in compact shape for the triumphal march homeward
bound."
Alas, the pigeons and the frosty morning hunts and the delectable
pigeon-pie are gone, no more to return. They are numbered with those
recollections which help to convince me that the boys of to-day don't
have as good times as we youngsters did in the prime of our busy
outdoor world.
CHAPTER II
The Passenger Pigeon
(_Columba Migratoria_)
From "American Ornithology," by Alexander Wilson
This remarkable bird merits a distinguished place in the annals of our
feathered tribes--a claim to which I shall endeavor to do justice;
and, though it would be impossible, in the bounds allotted to this
account, to relate all I have seen and heard of this species, yet no
circumstance shall be omitted with which I am acquainted (however
extraordinary some of these may appear) that may tend to illustrate its
history.
The wild pigeon of the United States inhabits a wide and extensive
region of North America, on this side of the Great Stony Mountains,
beyond which, to the westward, I have not heard of their being seen.
According to Mr. Hutchins, they abound in the country around Hudson's
Bay, where they usually remain as late as December, feeding, when the
ground is covered with snow, on the buds of the juniper. They spread
over the whole of Canada; were seen by Captain Lewis and his party near
the Great Falls of the Missouri, upwards of two thousand five hundred
miles from its mouth, reckoning the meanderings of the river; were also
met with in the interior of Louisiana by Colonel Pike; and extend their
range as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, occasionally visiting or
breeding in almost every quarter of the United States.
But the most remarkable characteristic of these birds is their
associating together, both in their migrations, and also during the
period of incubation, in such prodigious numbers, as almost to surpass
belief; and which has no parallel among any other of the feathered
tribes on the face of the earth, with which all naturalists are
acquainted. These migrations appear to be undertaken rather in quest
of food, than merely to avoid the cold of the climate, since we find
them lingering in the northern regions, around Hudson's Bay, so late
as December; and since their appearance is so casual and irregular,
sometimes not visiting certain districts for several years in any
considerable numbers, while at other times they are innumerable. I
have witnessed these migrations in the Genesee country, often in
Pennsylvania, and also in various parts of Virginia, with amazement;
but all that I had then seen of them were mere straggling parties,
when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld
in our Western forests, in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and the
Indiana territory. These fertile and extensive regions abound with
the nutritious beechnut, which constitutes the chief food of the
wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding
multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens
that, having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees, in an
extensive district, they discover another, at the distance perhaps of
sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning,
and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening,
to their place of general rendezvous, or as it is usually called, the
roosting place. These roosting places are always in the woods, and
sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented
one of these places for some time the appearance it exhibits is
surprising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with
their dung; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed; the surface
strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the
birds clustering one above another; and the trees themselves, for
thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an ax.
The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot; and
numerous places could be pointed out, where, for several years after,
scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance.
When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants, from
considerable distances, visit them in the night with guns, clubs, long
poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In
a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them.
By the Indians, a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an
important source of national profit and dependence for the season; and
all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion. The breeding
place differs from the former in its greater extent. In the western
countries above mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and
often extend, in nearly a straight line across the country for a great
way. Not far from Shelbyville, in the State of Kentucky, about five
years ago, there was one of these breeding places, which stretched
through the woods in nearly a north and south direction; was several
miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards of forty miles in extent!
In this tract almost every tree was furnished with nests, wherever
the branches could accommodate them. The pigeons made their first
appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether, with
their young, before the 29th of May.
As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests,
numerous parties of the inhabitants from all parts of the adjacent
country came with wagons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, many of them
accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for
several days at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that
the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and
that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without
bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees,
eggs, and young squab pigeons, which had been precipitated from above,
and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles
were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from
their nests at pleasure; while from twenty feet upwards to the tops
of the trees the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult
of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring
like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for
now the ax-men were at work cutting down those trees that seemed to be
most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner
that, in their descent, they might bring down several others; by which
means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred
squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost one mass
of fat. On some single trees upwards of one hundred nests were found,
each containing _one_ young only; a circumstance in the history of
this bird not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk
under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall of
large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes above,
and which, in their descent, often destroyed numbers of the birds
themselves; while the clothes of those engaged in traversing the woods
were completely covered with the excrements of the pigeons.
These circumstances were related to me by many of the most respectable
part of the community in that quarter, and were confirmed, in part, by
what I myself witnessed. I passed for several miles through this same
breeding place, where every tree was spotted with nests, the remains of
those above described. In many instances I counted upwards of ninety
nests on a single tree, but the pigeons had abandoned this place for
another, sixty or eighty miles off towards Green River, where they
were said at that time to be equally numerous. From the great numbers
that were constantly passing overhead to or from that quarter, I had
no doubt of the truth of this statement. The mast had been chiefly
consumed in Kentucky, and the pigeons, every morning a little before
sunrise, set out for the Indiana territory, the nearest part of which
was about sixty miles distant. Many of these returned before ten
o'clock, and the great body generally appeared on their return a little
after noon.
I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place
near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with my gun, on my
way to Frankfort, when, about one o'clock, the pigeons, which I had
observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to
return in such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed. Coming
to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a
more uninterrupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They
were flying with great steadiness and rapidity at a height beyond
gunshot in several strata deep, and so close together that could shot
have reached them one discharge could not have failed of bringing down
several individuals. From right to left, far as the eye could reach,
the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming everywhere
equally crowded. Curious to determine how long this appearance would
continue, I took out my watch to note the time, and sat down to,
observe them. It was then half-past one. I sat for more than an hour,
but, instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed
rather to increase both in numbers and rapidity, and, anxious to reach
Frankfort before night, I rose and went on. About four o'clock in
the afternoon I crossed the Kentucky River at the town of Frankfort,
at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous
and as extensive as ever. Long after this I observed them in large
bodies that continued to pass for six or eight minutes, and these
again were followed by other detached bodies, all moving in the same
southeast direction, till after six in the evening. The great breadth
of front which this mighty multitude preserved would seem to intimate
a corresponding breadth of their breeding place, which, by several
gentlemen who had lately passed through part of it, was stated to me
at several miles. It was said to be in Green County, and that the
young began to fly about the middle of March. On the seventeenth of
April, forty-nine miles beyond Danville, and not far from Green River,
I crossed this same breeding place, where the nests, for more than
three miles, spotted every tree; the leaves not being yet out I had a
fair prospect of them, and was really astonished at their numbers. A
few bodies of pigeons lingered yet in different parts of the woods, the
roaring of whose wings were heard in various quarters around me.
All accounts agree in stating that each nest contains only one young
squab. These are so extremely fat that the Indians, and many of the
whites, are accustomed to melt down the fat for domestic purposes as a
substitute for butter and lard. At the time they leave the nest they
are nearly as heavy as the old ones, but become much leaner after they
are turned out to shift for themselves.
It is universally asserted in the western countries that the pigeons,
though they have only one young at a time, breed thrice, and sometimes
four times in the same season; the circumstances already mentioned
render this highly probable. It is also worthy of observation that
this takes place during the period when acorns, beechnuts, etc., are
scattered about in the greatest abundance and mellowed by the frost.
But they are not confined to these alone; buckwheat, hempseed, Indian
corn, hollyberries, hackberries, huckleberries, and many others furnish
them with abundance at almost all seasons. The acorns of the live
oak are also eagerly sought after by these birds, and rice has been
frequently found in individuals killed many hundred miles to the
northward of the nearest rice plantation. The vast quantity of mast
which these multitudes consume is a serious loss to the bears, pigs,
squirrels, and other dependents on the fruits of the forest. I have
taken from the crop of a single wild pigeon a good handful of the
kernels of beechnuts, intermixed with acorns and chestnuts. To form a
rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these immense flocks
let us first attempt to calculate the numbers of that above mentioned,
as seen in passing between Frankfort and the Indiana territory. If we
suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe it
to have been much more), and that it moved at the rate of one mile in
a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its
whole length two hundred and forty miles. Again, supposing that each
square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons, the square
yards in the whole space, multiplied by three, would give two thousand
two hundred and thirty millions, two hundred and seventy-two thousand
pigeons!--an almost inconceivable multitude, and yet probably far below
the actual amount. Computing each of these to consume half a pint of
mast daily, the whole quantity at this rate would equal seventeen
millions, four hundred and twenty-four thousand bushels per day! Heaven
has wisely and graciously given to these birds rapidity of flight and
a disposition to range over vast uncultivated tracts of the earth,
otherwise they must have perished in the districts where they resided,
or devoured up the whole productions of agriculture, as well as those
of the forests.
A few observations on the mode of flight of these birds must not be
omitted. The appearance of large detached bodies of them in the air
and the various evolutions they display are strikingly picturesque and
interesting. In descending the Ohio by myself in the month of February
I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aërial manoeuvres. A
column, eight or ten miles in length, would appear from Kentucky,
high in air, steering across to Indiana. The leaders of this great
body would sometimes gradually vary their course until it formed a
large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing the
exact route of their predecessors. This would continue sometimes long
after both extremities were beyond the reach of sight, so that the
whole, with its glittery undulations, marked a space on the face of
the heavens resembling the windings of a vast and majestic river.
When this bend became very great the birds, as if sensible of the
unnecessary circuitous course they were taking, suddenly changed their
direction, so that what was in column before, became an immense front,
straightening all its indentures, until it swept the heavens in one
vast and infinitely extended line. Other lesser bodies also united with
each other as they happened to approach with such ease and elegance
of evolution, forming new figures, and varying these as they united
or separated, that I never was tired of contemplating them. Sometimes
a hawk would make a sweep on a particular part of the column from
a great height, when, almost as quick as lightning, that part shot
downwards out of the common track, but soon rising again, continued
advancing at the same height as before. This inflection was continued
by those behind, who, on arriving at this point, dived down, almost
perpendicularly, to a great depth, and rising, followed the exact path
of those that went before. As these vast bodies passed over the river
near me, the surface of the water, which was before smooth as glass,
appeared marked with innumerable dimples, occasioned by the dropping of
their dung, resembling the commencement of a shower of large drops of
rain or hail.
Happening to go ashore one charming afternoon, to purchase some milk at
a house that stood near the river, and while talking with the people
within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing
roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which, on the first moment, I
took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house and everything around
in destruction. The people, observing my surprise, coolly said: "It
is only the pigeons"; and on running out I beheld a flock, thirty or
forty yards in width, sweeping along very low between the house and the
mountain, or height, that formed the second bank of the river. These
continued passing for more than a quarter of an hour, and at length
varied their bearing so as to pass over the mountain, behind which they
disappeared before the rear came up.
In the Atlantic States, though they never appear in such unparalleled
multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous, and great havoc is
then made amongst them with the gun, the clap net, and various other
implements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that
the pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners
rise _en masse_, the clap nets are spread out on suitable situations,
commonly on an open height in an old buckwheat field; four or five
live pigeons, with their eyelids sewed up, are fastened on a movable
stick--a small hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the
distance of forty or fifty yards--by the pulling of a string the stick
on which the pigeons rest is alternately elevated and depressed, which
produces a fluttering of their wings similar to that of birds just
alighting; this being perceived by the passing flocks they descend with
great rapidity, and, finding corn, buckwheat, etc., strewed about,
begin to feed, and are instantly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by
the net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even thirty dozen have been
caught at one sweep. Meantime the air is darkened with large bodies
of them moving in various directions; the woods also swarm with them
in search of acorns; and the thundering of musketry is perpetual on
all sides from morning to night. Wagon loads of them are poured into
market, where they sell from fifty to twenty-five and even twelve cents
per dozen; and pigeons become the order of the day at dinner, breakfast
and supper, until the very name becomes sickening. When they have been
kept alive and fed for some time on corn and buckwheat their flesh
acquires great superiority; but, in their common state, they are dry
and blackish and far inferior to the full grown young ones or squabs.
The nest of the wild pigeon is formed of a few dry slender twigs,
carelessly put together, and with so little concavity that the young
one, when half grown, can easily be seen from below. The eggs are pure
white. Great numbers of hawks, and sometimes the bald eagle himself,
hover above those breeding places, and seize the old or the young
from the nest amidst the rising multitudes, and with the most daring
effrontery. The young, when beginning to fly, confine themselves to
the under part of the tall woods where there is no brush, and where
nuts and acorns are abundant, searching among the leaves for mast,
and appear like a prodigious torrent rolling through the woods, every
one striving to be in the front. Vast numbers of them are shot while
in this situation. A person told me that he once rode furiously into
one of these rolling multitudes and picked up thirteen pigeons which
had been trampled to death by his horse's feet. In a few minutes
they will beat the whole nuts from a tree with their wings, while
all is a scramble, both above and below, for the same. They have the
same cooing notes common to domestic pigeons, but much less of their
gesticulations. In some flocks you will find nothing but young ones,
which are easily distinguishable by their motley dress. In others they
will be mostly females, and again great multitudes of males with few
or no females. I cannot account for this in any other way than that,
during the time of incubation, the males are exclusively engaged in
procuring food, both for themselves and their mates, and the young,
being yet unable to undertake these extensive excursions, associate
together accordingly. But even in winter I know of several species
of birds who separate in this manner, particularly the red-winged
starling, among whom thousands of old males may be found with few or no
young or females along with them.
Stragglers from these immense armies settle in almost every part of
the country, particularly among the beech woods and in the pine and
hemlock woods of the eastern and northern parts of the continent. Mr.
Pennant informs us that they breed near Moose Fort, at Hudson's Bay, in
N. latitude 51 degrees, and I myself have seen the remains of a large
breeding place as far south as the country of the Choctaws, in latitude
32 degrees. In the former of these places they are said to remain until
December; from which circumstance it is evident that they are not
regular in their migrations like many other species, but rove about as
scarcity of food urges them. Every spring, however, as well as fall,
more or less of them are seen in the neighborhood of Philadelphia; but
it is only once in several years that they appear in such formidable
bodies; and this commonly when the snows are heavy to the north, the
winter here more than usually mild, and acorns, etc., abundant.
The passenger pigeon is sixteen inches long, and twenty-four inches in
extent; bill, black; nostril, covered by a high rounding protuberance;
eye, brilliant fiery orange; orbit, or space surrounding it, purplish
flesh-colored 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
last named most predominant; the ground color, 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 tipped and edged with brownish white; tail, long, and
greatly cuneiform, all the feathers tapering towards the point, the
two middle 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; primaries edged with
white; bastard wing, black.
The female is about half an inch shorter, and an inch less in extent;
breast, cinerous 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 orbits, slate colored;
in all other respects like the male in color, but less vivid and more
tinged with brown; the eye not so brilliant an orange. In both the tail
has only twelve feathers.
[Illustration: PASSENGER PIGEON (_Columba Migratoria_)
Upper bird, female; lower, male
_Reproduced from the John J. Audubon Plate_]
CHAPTER III
The Passenger Pigeon
From "Ornithological Biography," by John James Audubon
The Passenger Pigeon, or, as it is usually named in America, the Wild
Pigeon, moves with extreme rapidity, propelling itself by quickly
repeated flaps of the wings, which it brings more or less near to the
body, according to the degree of velocity which is required. Like
the domestic pigeon, it often flies, during the love season, in a
circling manner, supporting itself with both wings angularly elevated,
in which position it keeps them until it is about to alight. Now and
then, during these circular flights, the tips of the primary quills
of each wing are made to strike against each other, producing a smart
rap, which may be heard at a distance of thirty or forty yards. Before
alighting, the wild pigeon, like the Carolina parrot and a few other
species of birds, breaks the force of its flight by repeated flappings,
as if apprehensive of receiving injury from coming too suddenly into
contact with the branch or the spot of ground on which it intends to
settle.
I have commenced my description of this species with the above account
of its flight, because the most important facts connected with its
habits relate to its migrations. These are entirely owing to the
necessity of procuring food, and are not performed with the view of
escaping the severity of a northern latitude, or of seeking a southern
one for the purpose of breeding. They consequently do not take place at
any fixed period or season of the year. Indeed, it sometimes happens
that a continuance of a sufficient supply of food in one district will
keep these birds absent from another for years. I know, at least, to a
certainty, that in Kentucky they remained for several years constantly,
and were nowhere else to be found. They all suddenly disappeared one
season when the mast was exhausted and did not return for a long
period. Similar facts have been observed in other States.
Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an
astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved
by facts well-known in America. Thus, pigeons have been killed in
the neighborhood of New York, with their crops full of rice, which
they must have collected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these
districts being the nearest in which they could possibly have procured
a supply of that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so great
that they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must in
this case have traveled between three hundred and four hundred miles in
six hours, which shows their power of speed to be at an average about
one mile in a minute. A velocity such as this would enable one of these
birds, were it so inclined, to visit the European continent in less
than three days.
This great power of flight is seconded by as great a power of vision,
which enables them, as they travel at that swift rate, to inspect the
country below, discover their food with facility, and thus attain the
object for which their journey has been undertaken. This I have also
proved to be the case, by having observed them, when passing over a
sterile part of the country, or one scantily furnished with food suited
to them, keep high in the air, flying with an extended front, so as
to enable them to survey hundreds of acres at once. On the contrary,
when the land is richly covered with food, or the trees abundantly hung
with mast, they fly low, in order to discover the part most plentifully
supplied.
Their body is of an elongated oval form, steered by a long, well-plumed
tail, and propelled by well-set wings, the muscles of which are very
large and powerful for the size of the bird. When an individual is seen
gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a
thought, and on trying to see it again, the eye searches in vain; the
bird is gone.
The multitudes of wild pigeons in our woods are astonishing. Indeed,
after having viewed them so often, and under so many circumstances,
I even now feel inclined to pause, and assure myself that what I am
going to relate is fact. Yet I have seen it all, and that, too, in the
company of persons who, like myself, were struck with amazement.
In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of
the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens a few
miles beyond Hardensburgh, I observed the pigeons flying from northeast
to southwest, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them
before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might
pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated
myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot
for every flock that passed. In a short time, finding the task which
I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless
multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that one
hundred and sixty-three had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled
on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally
filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an
eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and
the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.
Whilst waiting for dinner at Young's Inn, at the confluence of Salt
River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still
going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and
the beechwood forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird
alighted; for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in the
neighborhood. They consequently flew so high, that different trials to
reach them with a capital rifle proved ineffectual; nor did the reports
disturb them in the least. I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty
of their aërial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear
of the flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder,
they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the
center. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating
and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with
inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a
vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within
their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic
serpent.
Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh
fifty-five miles. The pigeons were still passing in undiminished
numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The
people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men
and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which there flew lower
as they passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or
more, the population fed on no other flesh than that of pigeons, and
talked of nothing but pigeons. The atmosphere, during this time, was
strongly impregnated with the peculiar odor which emanates from the
species.
It is extremely interesting to see flock after flock performing
exactly the same evolutions which had been traced as it were in the
air by a preceding flock. Thus, should a hawk have charged on a group
at a certain spot, the angles, curves and undulations that have been
described by the birds, in their efforts to escape from the dreaded
talons of the plunderer, are undeviatingly followed by the next group
that comes up. Should the bystander happen to witness one of these
affrays, and, struck with the rapidity and elegance of the motions
exhibited, feel desirous of seeing them repeated, his wishes will be
gratified if he only remain in the place until the next group comes up.
It may not, perhaps, be out of place to attempt an estimate of the
number of pigeons contained in one of those mighty flocks, and of
the quantity of food daily consumed by its members. The inquiry will
tend to show the astonishing beauty of the great Author of Nature in
providing for the wants of His creatures. Let us take a column of one
mile in breadth, which is far below the average size, and suppose it
passing over us without interruption for three hours, at the rate
mentioned above of one mile in a minute. This will give a parallelogram
of one hundred and eighty by one, covering one hundred and eighty
square miles. Allowing two pigeons to the square yard, we have one
billion, one hundred and fifty millions, one hundred and thirty-six
thousand pigeons in one flock. As every pigeon daily consumes fully
half a pint of food, the quantity necessary for supplying this vast
multitude must be eight millions, seven hundred and twelve thousand
bushels per day.
As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them
to alight, they fly around in circles, reviewing the country below.
During their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they
form exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now
displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds
come simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass
of rich deep purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for
a moment are lost among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen
gliding aloft. They now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly
alarmed, they take to wing, producing by the flapping of their wings
a noise like the roar of distant thunder, and sweep through the
forests to see if danger is near. Hunger, however, soon brings them
to the ground. When alighted, they are seen industriously throwing up
the withered leaves in quest of the fallen mast. The rear ranks are
continually rising, passing over the main body, and alighting in front,
in such rapid succession, that the whole flock seems still on the wing.
The quantity of ground thus swept is astonishing, and so completely has
it been cleared, that the gleaner who might follow in their rear would
find his labor completely lost. Whilst feeding, their avidity is at
times so great that in attempting to swallow a large acorn or nut, they
are seen gasping for a long while, as if in agonies of suffocation.
On such occasions, when the woods are filled with these pigeons,
they are killed in immense numbers, although no apparent diminution
ensues. About the middle of the day, after their repast is finished,
they settle on the trees, to enjoy rest, and digest their food. On the
ground they walk with ease, as well as on the branches, frequently
jerking their beautiful tail, and moving the neck backwards and
forwards in the most graceful manner. As the sun begins to sink beneath
the horizon, they depart _en masse_ for the roosting place, which not
infrequently is hundreds of miles distant, as has been ascertained by
persons who have kept an account of their arrivals and departures.
Let us now, kind reader, inspect their place of nightly rendezvous.
One of these curious roosting places, on the banks of the Green River
in Kentucky, I repeatedly visited. It was, as is always the case, in
a portion of the forest where the trees were of great magnitude, and
where there was little underwood. I rode through it upwards of forty
miles, and, crossing it in different parts, found its average breadth
to be rather more than three miles. My first view of it was about a
fortnight subsequent to the period when they had made choice of it, and
I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset. Few pigeons were then
to be seen, but a great number of persons, with horses and wagons,
guns and ammunition, had already established encampments on the borders.
Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more than a
hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fattened
on the pigeons which were to be slaughtered. Here and there, the people
employed in plucking and salting what had already been procured, were
seen sitting in the midst of large piles of these birds. The dung lay
several inches deep, covering the whole extent of the roosting place,
like a bed of snow. Many trees two feet in diameter, I observed, were
broken off at no great distance from the ground; and the branches of
many of the largest and tallest had given way, as if the forest had
been swept by a tornado. Everything proved to me that the number of
birds resorting to this part of the forest must be immense beyond
conception. As the period of their arrival approached, their foes
anxiously prepared to receive them. Some were furnished with iron
pots containing sulphur, others with torches of pine knots, many with
poles, and the rest with guns. The sun was lost to our view, yet not
a pigeon had arrived. Everything was ready, and all eyes were gazing
on the clear sky, which appeared in glimpses amidst the tall trees.
Suddenly there burst forth a general cry of "Here they come!" The
noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a hard gale
at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As
the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that
surprised me. Thousands were seen knocked down by the pole-men. The
birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted, and a magnificent,
as well as wonderful and almost terrifying sight presented itself.
The pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, one above
another, until solid masses as large as hogsheads were formed on the
branches all round. Here and there the perches gave way under the
weight with a crash, and, falling to the ground destroyed hundreds of
the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick
was loaded. It was a scene of uproar and confusion. I found it quite
useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons who were nearest
to me. Even the reports of the guns were seldom heard, and I was made
aware of the firing only by seeing the shooters reloading.
No one dared venture within the line of devastation. The hogs had been
penned up in due time, the picking up of the dead and wounded being
left for the next morning's employment. The pigeons were constantly
coming, and it was past midnight before I perceived a decrease in the
number of those that arrived. The uproar continued the whole night; and
as I was anxious to know to what distance the sound reached, I sent
off a man, accustomed to perambulate the forest, who, returning two
hours afterwards, informed me he had heard it distinctly when three
miles distant from the spot. Toward the approach of day, the noise in
some measure subsided, long before objects were distinguishable, the
pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from that in
which they had arrived the evening before, and at sunrise all that were
able to fly had disappeared. The howlings of the wolves now reached our
ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears, raccoons, opossums, and
pole-cats were seen sneaking off, whilst eagles and hawks of different
species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures, came to supplant them and
enjoy their share of the spoil.
It was then that the authors of all this devastation began their entry
amongst the dead, the dying and the mangled. The pigeons were picked up
and piled in heaps, until each had as many as he could possibly dispose
of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder.
Persons unacquainted with these birds might naturally conclude that
such dreadful havoc would soon put an end to the species. But I have
satisfied myself, by long observation, that nothing but the gradual
diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease, as they not
infrequently quadruple their numbers yearly, and always at least double
it. In 1805 I saw schooners loaded in bulk with pigeons caught up
the Hudson River, coming into the wharf at New York, when the birds
sold for a cent apiece. I knew a man in Pennsylvania, who caught and
killed upward of five hundred dozens in a clap net in one day, sweeping
sometimes twenty dozens or more at a single haul. In the month of
March, 1830, they were so abundant in the markets of New York, that
piles of them met the eye in every direction. I have seen the negroes
at the United States' Salines or Saltworks of Shawnee Town, wearied
with killing pigeons, as they alighted to drink the water issuing from
the leading pipes, for weeks at a time; and yet in 1826, in Louisiana,
I saw congregated flocks of these birds as numerous as ever I had seen
them before, during a residence of nearly thirty years in the United
States.
The breeding of the wild pigeons, and the places chosen for that
purpose, are points of great interest. The time is not much influenced
by season, and the place selected is where food is most plentiful and
most attainable, and always at a convenient distance from water. Forest
trees of great height are those in which the pigeons form their nests.
Thither the countless myriads resort, and prepare to fulfill one of
the great laws of nature. At this period the note of the pigeon is a
soft coo-coo-coo-coo much shorter than that of the domestic species.
The common notes resemble the monosyllables kee-kee-kee-kee, the first
being the loudest, the others gradually diminishing in power. The
male assumes a pompous demeanor, and follows the female whether on
the ground or on the branches, with spread tail and drooping wings,
which it rubs against the part over which it is moving. The body is
elevated, the throat swells, the eyes sparkle. He continues his notes,
and now and then rises on the wing, and flies a few yards to approach
the fugitive and timorous female. Like the domestic pigeon and other
species, they caress each other by billing, in which action, the bill
of the one is introduced transversely into that of the other, and both
parties alternately disgorge the contents of their crops by repeated
efforts. These preliminary affairs are soon settled, and the pigeons
commence their nests in general peace and harmony. They are composed
of a few dry twigs, crossing each other, and are supported by forks
of the branches. On the same tree from fifty to a hundred nests may
frequently be seen: I might say a much greater number, were I not
anxious, kind reader, that however wonderful my account of the wild
pigeons is, you may not feel disposed to refer it to the marvelous. The
eggs are two in number, of a broadly elliptical form, and pure white.
During incubation, the male supplies the female with food. Indeed, the
tenderness and affection displayed by these birds toward their mates,
are in the highest degree striking. It is a remarkable fact that each
brood generally consists of a male and a female.
Here again, the tyrant of the creation, man, interferes, disturbing
the harmony of this peaceful scene. As the young birds grow up, their
enemies armed with axes, reach the spot, to seize and destroy all
they can. The trees are felled, and made to fall in such a way that
the cutting of one causes the overthrow of another, or shakes the
neighboring trees so much, that the young pigeons, or squabs, as they
are named, are violently hurled to the ground. In this manner, also,
immense quantities are destroyed.
The young are fed by the parents in the manner described above; in
other words, the old bird introduces its bill into the mouth of the
young one in a transverse manner, or with the back of each mandible
opposite the separations of the mandibles of the young bird, and
disgorges the contents of its crop. As soon as the young birds are
able to shift for themselves, they leave their parents, and continue
separate until they attain maturity. By the end of six months they are
capable of reproducing their species.
The flesh of the wild pigeon is of a dark color, but affords tolerable
eating. That of young birds from the nest is much esteemed. The skin
is covered with small white filmy scales. The feathers fall off at
the least touch, as has been remarked to be the case in the Carolina
Turtle. I have only to add that this species, like others of the same
genus, immerses its head up to the eyes while drinking.
In March, 1830, I bought about three hundred and fifty of these birds
in the market of New York, at four cents apiece. Most of these I
carried alive to England, and distributed among several noblemen,
presenting some at the same time to the Zoölogical Society.
ADULT MALE
Bill--straight, of ordinary length, rather slender, broader than deep
at the base, with a tumid, fleshy covering above, compressed toward the
end, rather obtuse; upper mandible slightly declinate at the tip, edges
inflected. Head--small; neck, slender; body, rather full. Legs--short
and strong; tarsus, rather rounded; anteriorly scutellate; toes,
slightly webbed at the base; claws, short, depressed, obtuse.
Plumage--blended on the neck and under parts, compact on the back.
Wings--long, the second quill longest. Tail--graduated, of twelve
tapering feathers.
Bill--black. Iris--bright red. Feet--carmine purple, claws blackish.
Head--above and on the sides light blue. Throat, fore-neck, breast,
and sides--light brownish-red, the rest of the under parts white.
Lower part of the neck behind, and along the sides, changing to gold,
emerald green, and rich crimson. The general color of the upper parts
is grayish-blue, some of the wing-coverts marked with a black spot.
Quills and larger wing-coverts blackish, the primary quills bluish in
the outer web, the larger coverts whitish at the tip. The two middle
feathers of the tail black, the rest pale blue at the base, becoming
white toward the end.
Length, 16-1/4 inches; extent of wings, 25; bill, along the ridge,
5/6, along the gap, 1-1/12; tarsus, 1-1/4 middle toe, 1-1/3.
ADULT FEMALE
The colors of the female are much duller than those of the male,
although their distribution is the same. The breast is light
grayish-brown, the upper parts pale reddish-brown, tinged with blue.
The changeable spot on the neck is of less extent, and the eye of a
somewhat duller red, as are the feet.
Length, 15 inches; extent of wings, 23; bill, along the ridge, 3/4;
along the gap, 5/6.
CHAPTER IV
As James Fenimore Cooper Saw It
One of the most graphic descriptions ever written of a pigeon flight
and slaughter is to be found in Cooper's novel, "The Pioneers," from
which I make the following extracts:
"See, cousin Bess! see, Duke, the pigeon-roosts of the south have
broken up! They are growing more thick every instant. Here is a flock
that the eye cannot see the end of. There is food enough in it to
keep the army of Xerxes for a month and feathers enough to make beds
for the whole country.... The reports of the firearms became rapid,
whole volleys rising from the plain, as flocks of more than ordinary
numbers darted over the opening, shadowing the field like a cloud;
and then the light smoke of a single piece would issue from among the
leafless bushes on the mountain, as death was hurled on the retreat of
the affrighted birds, who were rising from a volley, in a vain effort
to escape. Arrows and missiles of every kind were in the midst of the
flocks; and so numerous were the birds, and so low did they take their
flight, that even long poles, in the hands of those on the sides of the
mountain, were used to strike them to the earth.... So prodigious was
the number of the birds, that the scattering fire of the guns, with
the hurtling missiles, and the cries of the boys, had no other effect
than to break off small flocks from the immense masses that continued
to dart along the valley, as if the whole of the feathered tribe were
pouring through that one pass. None pretended to collect the game,
which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the
very ground with the fluttering victims."
The slaughter described finally ended with a grand finale when an old
swivel gun was "loaded with handsful of bird-shot," and fired into the
mass of pigeons with such fatal effect that there were birds enough
killed and wounded on the ground to feed the whole settlement.
The following description is from "The Chainbearer," also by J.
Fenimore Cooper. The region of which he writes is in Central New York.
"I scarce know how to describe the remarkable scene. As we drew near to
the summit of the hill, pigeons began to be seen fluttering among the
branches over our heads, as individuals are met along the roads that
lead into the suburbs of a large town. We had probably seen a thousand
birds glancing around among the trees, before we came in view of the
roost itself. The numbers increased as we drew nearer, and presently
the forest was alive with them.
"The fluttering was incessant, and often startling as we passed ahead,
our march producing a movement in the living crowd, that really became
confounding. Every tree was literally covered with nests, many having
at least a thousand of these frail tenements on their branches, and
shaded by the leaves. They often touched each other, a wonderful degree
of order prevailing among the hundreds of thousands of families that
were here assembled.
"The place had the odor of a fowl-house, and squabs just fledged
sufficiently to trust themselves in short flights, were fluttering
around us in all directions, in tens of thousands. To these were to
be added the parents of the young race endeavoring to protect them
and guide them in a way to escape harm. Although the birds rose as
we approached, and the woods just around us seemed fairly alive with
pigeons, our presence produced no general commotion; every one of
the feathered throng appearing to be so much occupied with its own
concerns, as to take little heed of the visit of a party of strangers,
though of a race usually so formidable to their own.
"The masses moved before us precisely as a crowd of human beings yields
to a pressure or a danger on any given point; the vacuum created by its
passage filling in its rear as the water of the ocean flows into the
track of the keel.
"The effect on most of us was confounding, and I can only compare the
sensation produced on myself by the extraordinary tumult to that a
man experiences at finding himself suddenly placed in the midst of an
excited throng of human beings. The unnatural disregard of our persons
manifested by the birds greatly heightened the effect, and caused me
to feel as if some unearthly influence reigned in the place. It was
strange, indeed, to be in a mob of the feathered race, that scarce
exhibited a consciousness of one's presence. The pigeons seemed a world
of themselves, and too much occupied with their own concerns to take
heed of matters that lay beyond them.
"Not one of our party spoke for several minutes. Astonishment seemed
to hold us all tongue-tied, and we moved slowly forward into the
fluttering throng, silent, absorbed, and full of admiration of the
works of the Creator. It was not easy to hear each others' voices when
we did speak, the incessant fluttering of wings filling the air. Nor
were the birds silent in other respects.
"The pigeon is not a noisy creature, but a million crowded together on
the summit of one hill, occupying a space of less than a mile square,
did not leave the forest in its ordinary impressive stillness. As we
advanced, I offered my arm, almost unconsciously again to Dus, and
she took it with the same abstracted manner as that in which it had
been held forth for her acceptance. In this relation to each other, we
continued to follow the grave-looking Onondago, as he moved, still
deeper and deeper, into the midst of the fluttering tumult.
* * * * *
"While standing wondering at the extraordinary scene around us, a noise
was heard rising above that of the incessant fluttering which I can
only liken to that of the trampling of thousands of horses on a beaten
road. This noise at first sounded distant, but it increased rapidly
in proximity and power, until it came rolling in upon us, among the
tree-tops, like a crash of thunder. The air was suddenly darkened,
and the place where we stood as somber as a dusky twilight. At the
same instant, all the pigeons near us, that had been on their nests,
appeared to fall out of them, and the space immediately above our heads
was at once filled with birds.
"Chaos itself could hardly have represented greater confusion, or a
greater uproar. As for the birds, they now seemed to disregard our
presence entirely; possibly they could not see us on account of their
own numbers, for they fluttered in between Dus and myself, hitting us
with their wings, and at times appearing as if about to bury us in
avalanches of pigeons. Each of us caught one at least in our hands,
while Chainbearer and the Indian took them in some numbers, letting one
prisoner go as another was taken. In a word, we seemed to be in a world
of pigeons. This part of the scene may have lasted a minute, when the
space around us was suddenly cleared, the birds glancing upward among
the branches of the trees, disappearing among the foliage. All this was
the effect produced by the return of the female birds, which had been
off at a distance, some twenty miles at least, to feed on beechnuts,
and which now assumed the places of the males on the nests; the latter
taking a flight to get their meal in their turn.
"I have since had the curiosity to make a sort of an estimate of the
number of the birds that must have come in upon the roost, in that, to
us, memorable moment. Such a calculation, as a matter of course, must
be very vague, though one may get certain principles by estimating
the size of a flock by the known rapidity of the flight, and other
similar means; and I remember that Frank Malbone and myself supposed
that a million of birds must have come in on that return, and as many
departed! As the pigeon is a very voracious bird, the question is apt
to present itself, where food is obtained for so many mouths; but, when
we remember the vast extent of the American forests, this difficulty
is at once met. Admitting that the colony we visited contained many
millions of birds, and, counting old and young, I have no doubt it did,
there was probably a fruit-bearing tree for each, within an hour's
flight from that very spot!
"Such is the scale on which Nature labors in the wilderness! I have
seen insects fluttering in the air at particular seasons, and at
particular places, until they formed little clouds; a sight every one
must have witnessed on many occasions; and as those insects appeared,
on their diminished scale, so did the pigeons appear to us at the roost
of Mooseridge."
CHAPTER V
The Wild Pigeon of North America
By Chief Pokagon,[A] from "The Chautauquan," November, 1895. Vol. 22.
No. 20.
[Footnote A: Simon Pokagon, of Michigan, is a full-blooded Indian, the
last Pottawattomie chief of the Pokagon band. He is author of the "Red
Man's Greeting," and has been called by the press the "Redskin poet,
bard, and Longfellow of his race." His father, chief before him, sold
the site of Chicago and the surrounding country to the United States
in 1833 for three cents an acre. He was the first red man to visit
President Lincoln after his inauguration. In a letter written home at
the time he said: "I have met Lincoln, the great chief; he is very
tall, has a sad face, but he is a good man, I saw it in his eyes and
felt it in his hand-shaking. He will help us get payment for Chicago
land." Soon after $39,000 was paid. In 1874 he visited President Grant.
He said of him: "I expected he would put on military importance, but
he treated me kindly, give me a cigar, and we smoked the pipe of peace
together." In 1893 he procured judgment against the United States for
over $100,000 still due on the sale of the Chicago land by his father.
He was honored on Chicago Day at the World's Fair by first ringing the
new Bell of Liberty and speaking in behalf of his race to the greatest
crowd ever assembled on earth. After his speech "Glory Hallelujah" was
sung before the bell for the first time on the Fair grounds.]
The migratory or wild pigeon of North America was known by our race as
_O-me-me-wog_. Why the European race did not accept that name was, no
doubt, because the bird so much resembled the domesticated pigeon; they
naturally called it a wild pigeon, as they called us wild men.
This remarkable bird differs from the dove or domesticated pigeon,
which was imported into this country, in the grace of its long neck,
its slender bill and legs, and its narrow wings. Its tail is eight
inches long, having twelve feathers, white on the under side. The
two center feathers are longest, while five arranged on either side
diminished gradually each one-half inch in length, giving to the
tail when spread an almost conical appearance. Its back and upper
part of the wings and head are a darkish blue, with a silken velvety
appearance. Its neck is resplendent in gold and green with royal purple
intermixed. Its breast is reddish-brown, fading toward the belly into
white. Its tail is tipped with white, intermixed with bluish-black. The
female is one inch shorter than the male, and her color less vivid.
It was proverbial with our fathers that if the Great Spirit in His
wisdom could have created a more elegant bird in plumage, form, and
movement, He never did. When a young man I have stood for hours
admiring the movements of these birds. I have seen them fly in unbroken
lines from the horizon, one line succeeding another from morning until
night, moving their unbroken columns like an army of trained soldiers
pushing to the front, while detached bodies of these birds appeared
in different parts of the heavens, pressing forward in haste like raw
recruits preparing for battle. At other times I have seen them move in
one unbroken column for hours across the sky, like some great river,
ever varying in hue; and as the mighty stream, sweeping on at sixty
miles an hour, reached some deep valley, it would pour its living mass
headlong down hundreds of feet, sounding as though a whirlwind was
abroad in the land. I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America
and regarded the descending torrents in wonder and astonishment, yet
never have my astonishment, wonder, and admiration been so stirred as
when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors
from heaven.
While feeding, they always have guards on duty, to give alarm of
danger. It is made by the watch-bird as it takes its flight, beating
its wings together in quick succession, sounding like the rolling beat
of a snare drum. Quick as thought each bird repeats the alarm with a
thundering sound, as the flock struggles to rise, leading a stranger to
think a young cyclone is then being born.
... About the middle of May, 1850, while in the fur trade, I was
camping on the head waters of the Manistee River in Michigan. One
morning on leaving my wigwam I was startled by hearing a gurgling,
rumbling sound, as though an army of horses laden with sleigh bells
was advancing through the deep forests towards me. As I listened more
intently I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was
distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm and beautiful.
Nearer and nearer came the strange commingling sounds of sleigh bells,
mixed with the rumbling of an approaching storm. While I gazed in
wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front
millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season. They passed like
a cloud through the branches of the high trees, through the underbrush
and over the ground, apparently overturning every leaf. Statue-like I
stood, half-concealed by cedar boughs. They fluttered all about me,
lighting on my head and shoulders; gently I caught two in my hands and
carefully concealed them under my blanket.
I now began to realize they were mating, preparatory to nesting. It
was an event which I had long hoped to witness; so I sat down and
carefully watched their movements, amid the greatest tumult. I tried to
understand their strange language, and why they all chatted in concert.
In the course of the day the great on-moving mass passed by me, but
the trees were still filled with them sitting in pairs in convenient
crotches of the limbs, now and then gently fluttering their half-spread
wings and uttering to their mates those strange, bell-like wooing notes
which I had mistaken for the ringing of bells in the distance.
On the third day after, this chattering ceased and all were busy
carrying sticks with which they were building nests in the same
crotches of the limbs they had occupied in pairs the day before. On the
morning of the fourth day their nests were finished and eggs laid. The
hen birds occupied the nests in the morning, while the male birds went
out into the surrounding country to feed, returning about ten o'clock,
taking the nests, while the hens went out to feed, returning about
three o'clock. Again changing nests, the male birds went out the second
time to feed, returning at sundown. The same routine was pursued each
day until the young ones were hatched and nearly half grown, at which
time all the parent birds left the brooding grounds about daylight. On
the morning of the eleventh day, after the eggs were laid, I found the
nesting grounds strewn with egg shells, convincing me that the young
were hatched. In thirteen days more the parent birds left their young
to shift for themselves, flying to the east about sixty miles, when
they again nested. The female lays but one egg during the same nesting.
Both sexes secrete in their crops milk or curd with which they feed
their young, until they are nearly ready to fly, when they stuff them
with mast and such other raw material as they themselves eat, until
their crops exceed their bodies in size, giving to them an appearance
of two birds with one head. Within two days after the stuffing they
become a mass of fat--"a squab." At this period the parent bird drives
them from the nests to take care of themselves, while they fly off
within a day or two, sometimes hundreds of miles, and again nest.
It has been well established that these birds look after and take care
of all orphan squabs whose parents have been killed or are missing.
These birds are long-lived, having been known to live twenty-five years
caged. When food is abundant they nest each month in the year.
Their principal food is the mast of the forest, except when curd is
being secreted in their crops, at which time they denude the country
of snails and worms for miles around the nesting grounds. Because they
nest in such immense bodies, they are frequently compelled to fly from
fifty to one hundred miles for food.
During my early life I learned that these birds in spring and fall
were seen in their migrations from the Atlantic to the Mississippi
River. This knowledge, together with my personal observation of their
countless numbers, led me to believe they were almost as inexhaustible
as the great ocean itself. Of course I had witnessed the passing away
of the deer, buffalo, and elk, but I looked upon them as local in their
habits, while these birds spanned the continent, frequently nesting
beyond the reach of cruel man.
Between 1840 and 1880 I visited in the States of Ohio, Indiana, and
Michigan many brooding places that were from twenty to thirty miles
long and from three to four miles wide, every tree in its limits being
spotted with nests. Yet, notwithstanding their countless numbers, great
endurance, and long life, they have almost entirely disappeared from
our forests. We strain our eyes in spring and autumn in vain to catch
a glimpse of these pilgrims. White men tell us they have moved in a
body to the Rocky Mountain region, where they are as plenty as they
were here, but when we ask red men, who are familiar with the mountain
country, about them, they shake their heads in disbelief.
A pigeon nesting was always a great source of revenue to our people.
Whole tribes would wigwam in the brooding places. They seldom killed
the old birds, but made great preparation to secure their young, out
of which the squaws made squab butter and smoked and dried them by
thousands for future use. Yet, under our manner of securing them, they
continued to increase.
White men commenced netting them for market about the year 1840. These
men were known as professional pigeoners, from the fact that they
banded themselves together, so as to keep in telegraphic communication
with these great moving bodies. In this they became so expert as to be
almost continually on the borders of their brooding places. As they
were always prepared with trained stool-pigeons and flyers, which
they carried with them, they were enabled to call down the passing
flocks and secure as many by net as they were able to pack in ice and
ship to market. In the year 1848 there were shipped from Catteraugus
County, N. Y., eighty tons of these birds; and from that time to 1878
the wholesale slaughter continued to increase, and in that year there
were shipped from Michigan not less than three hundred tons of birds.
During the thirty years of their greatest slaughter there must have
been shipped to our great cities 5,700 tons of these birds; allowing
each pigeon to weigh one-half pound would show twenty-three millions
of birds. Think of it! And all these were caught during their brooding
season, which must have decreased their numbers as many more. Nor is
this all. During the same time hunters from all parts of the country
gathered at these brooding places and slaughtered them without mercy.
In the above estimate are not reckoned the thousands of dozens that
were shipped alive to sporting clubs for trap-shooting, as well as
those consumed by the local trade throughout the pigeon districts of
the United States.
These experts finally learned that the birds while nesting were frantic
after salty mud and water, so they frequently made, near the nesting
places, what were known by the craft as mud beds, which were salted,
to which the birds would flock by the million. In April, 1876, I
was invited to see a net over one of these death pits. It was near
Petoskey, Mich. I think I am correct in saying the birds piled one upon
another at least two feet deep when the net was sprung, and it seemed
to me that most of them escaped the trap, but on killing and counting,
there were found to be over one hundred dozen, all nesting birds.
When squabs of a nesting became fit for market, these experts, prepared
with climbers, would get into some convenient place in a tree-top
loaded with nests, and with a long pole punch out the young, which
would fall with a thud like lead on the ground.
In May, 1880, I visited the last known nesting place east of the Great
Lakes. It was on Platt River in Benzie County, Mich. There were on
these grounds many large white birch trees filled with nests. These
trees have manifold bark, which, when old, hangs in shreds like rags or
flowing moss, along their trunks and limbs. This bark will burn like
paper soaked in oil. Here, for the first time, I saw with shame and
pity a new mode for robbing these birds' nests, which I look upon as
being devilish. These outlaws to all moral sense would touch a lighted
match to the bark of the trees at the base, when with a flash--more
like an explosion--the blast would reach every limb of the tree, and
while the affrighted young birds would leap simultaneously to the
ground, the parent birds, with plumage scorched, would rise high in
air amid flame and smoke. I noticed that many of these squabs were so
fat and clumsy they would burst open on striking the ground. Several
thousand were obtained during the day by this cruel process.
That night I stayed with an old man on the highlands just north of the
nesting. In the course of the evening I explained to him the cruelty
that was being shown to the young birds in the nesting. He listened
to me in utter astonishment, and said, "My God, is that possible!"
Remaining silent a few moments with bowed head, he looked up and said,
"See here, old Indian, you go out with me in the morning and I will
show you a way to catch pigeons that will please any red man and the
birds, too."
Early the next morning I followed him a few rods from his hut, where
he showed me an open pole pen, about two feet high, which he called
his bait bed. Into this he scattered a bucket of wheat. We then sat in
ambush, so as to see through between the poles into the pen. Soon they
began to pour into the pen and gorge themselves. While I was watching
and admiring them, all at once to my surprise they began fluttering
and falling on their sides and backs and kicking and quivering like a
lot of cats with paper tied over their feet. He jumped into the pen,
saying, "Come on, you red-skin."
I was right on hand by his side. A few birds flew out of the pen
apparently crippled, but we caught and caged about one hundred fine
birds. After my excitement was over I sat down on one of the cages,
and thought in my heart, "Certainly Pokagon is dreaming, or this
long-haired white man is a witch." I finally said, "Look here, old
fellow, tell me how you did that." He gazed at me, holding his long
white beard in one hand, and said with one eye half shut and a sly
wink with the other, "That wheat was soaked in whisky." His answer
fell like lead upon my heart. We had talked temperance together the
night before, and the old man wept when I told him how my people had
fallen before the intoxicating cup of the white man like leaves before
the blast of autumn. In silence I left the place, saying in my heart,
"Surely the time is now fulfilled, when false prophets shall show signs
and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect."
I have read recently in some of our game-sporting journals, "A warwhoop
has been sounded against some of our western Indians for killing game
in the mountain region." Now, if these red men are guilty of a moral
wrong which subjects them to punishment, I would most prayerfully ask
in the name of Him who suffers not a sparrow to fall unnoticed, what
must be the nature of the crime and degree of punishment awaiting our
white neighbors who have so wantonly butchered and driven from our
forests these wild pigeons, the most beautiful flowers of the animal
creation of North America.
In closing this article I wish to say a few words relative to the
knowledge of things about them that these birds seem to possess.
In the spring of 1866 there were scattered throughout northern Indiana
and southern Michigan vast numbers of these birds. On April 10, in the
morning, they commenced moving in small flocks in diverging lines
toward the northwest part of Van Buren County, Mich. For two days they
continued to pour into that vicinity from all directions, commencing at
once to build their nests. I talked with an old trapper who lived on
the brooding grounds, and he assured me that the first pigeons he had
seen that season were on the day they commenced nesting and that he had
lived there fifteen years and never known them to nest there before.
From the above instance and hundreds of others I might mention, it
is well established in my mind beyond a reasonable doubt, that these
birds, as well as many other animals, have communicated to them by
some means unknown to us, a knowledge of distant places, and of one
another when separated, and that they act on such knowledge with just
as much certainty as if it were conveyed to them by ear or eye. Hence
we conclude it is possible that the Great Spirit in His wisdom has
provided them a means to receive electric communications from distant
places and with one another.
CHAPTER VI
The Passenger Pigeon
From "Life Histories of North American Birds,"[B]
by Charles Bendire
[Footnote B: The first volume of Captain Bendire's monumental work was
published in 1892, by which time the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon
was foretold as a matter of a few more years. His contribution to the
subject therefore deals with a much later period in the history of the
bird and links the studies of Wilson and Audubon with the present day.]
Geographical Range: Deciduous forest regions of eastern North America;
west, casually, to Washington and Nevada; Cuba.
The breeding range of the Passenger Pigeon to-day is to be looked for
principally in the thinly settled and wooded region along our northern
border, from northern Maine westward to northern Minnesota; in the
Dakotas, as well as in similar localities in the eastern and middle
portions of the Dominion of Canada, and north at least to Hudson's
Bay. Isolated and scattering pairs probably still breed in the New
England States, northern New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and a few other localities further south, but the enormous
breeding colonies, or pigeon roosts, as they were formerly called,
frequently covering the forest for miles, and so often mentioned by
naturalists and hunters in former years, are, like the immense herds
of the American bison which roamed over the great plains of the West in
countless thousands but a couple of decades ago, things of the past,
probably never to be seen again.
In fact, the extermination of the Passenger Pigeon has progressed so
rapidly during the past twenty years that it looks now as if their
total extermination might be accomplished within the present century.
The only thing which retards their complete extinction is that it no
longer pays to net these birds, they being too scarce for this now, at
least in the more settled portions of the country, and also, perhaps,
that from constant and unremitting persecution on their breeding
grounds they have changed their habits somewhat, the majority no longer
breeding in colonies, but scattering over the country and breeding in
isolated pairs.
Mr. William Brewster, in his article "On the Present Status of the
Wild Pigeon," etc., writes as follows: "In the spring of 1888 my
friend, Captain Bendire, wrote me that he had received news from a
correspondent in central Michigan to the effect that wild pigeons had
arrived there in great numbers and were preparing to nest. Acting on
this information, I started at once, in company with Mr. Jonathan
Dwight, Jr., to visit the expected 'nesting' and learn as much as
possible about the habits of the breeding birds, as well as to secure
specimens of their skins and eggs.
"On reaching Cadillac, Michigan, May 8, we found that large flocks of
pigeons had passed there late in April, while there were reports of
similar flights from almost every county in the southern part of the
State. Although most of the birds had passed on before our arrival, the
professional pigeon netters, confident that they would finally breed
somewhere in the southern peninsula, were busily engaged getting their
nets and other apparatus in order for an extensive campaign against the
poor birds.
"We were assured that as soon as the breeding colony became established
the fact would be known all over the State, and there would be no
difficulty in ascertaining its precise location. Accordingly, we
waited at Cadillac about two weeks, during which time we were in
correspondence with netters in different parts of the region. No news
came, however, and one by one the netters lost heart, until finally
most of them agreed that the pigeons had gone to the far north, beyond
the reach of mail and telegraphic communication. As a last hope,
we went, on May 15, to Oden, in the northern part of the southern
peninsula, about twenty miles south of the Straits of Mackinac. Here
we found that there had been, as elsewhere in Michigan, a heavy flight
of birds in the latter part of April, but that all had passed on.
Thus our trip proved a failure as far as actually seeing a pigeon
'nesting' was concerned; but partly by observation, partly by talking
with the netters, farmers, sportsmen, and lumbermen, we obtained much
information regarding the flight of 1888, and the larger nestings that
have occurred in Michigan within the past decade, as well as many
interesting details, some of which appear to be new about the habits of
the birds.
"Our principal informant was Mr. S. S. Stevens, of Cadillac, a veteran
pigeon netter of large experience, and, as we were assured by everyone
whom we asked concerning him, a man of high reputation for veracity
and carefulness of statement. His testimony was as follows: 'Pigeons
appeared that year in numbers near Cadillac, about the 20th of April.
He saw fully sixty in one day, scattered about in beech woods near the
head of Clam Lake, and on another occasion about one hundred drinking
at the mouth of the brook, while a flock that covered at least 8
acres was observed by a friend, a perfectly reliable man, flying in a
north-easterly direction. Many other smaller flocks were reported."
"The last nesting of any importance in Michigan was in 1881, a few
miles west of Grand Traverse. It was only of moderate size, perhaps 8
miles long. Subsequently, in 1886, Mr. Stevens found about fifty dozen
pairs nesting in a swamp near Lake City. He does not doubt that similar
small colonies occur every year, besides scattered pairs. In fact, he
sees a few pigeons about Cadillac every summer, and in the early autumn
young birds, barely able to fly, are often met with singly or in small
parties in the woods. Such stragglers attract little attention, and no
one attempts to net them, although many are shot.
"The largest nesting he ever visited was in 1876 or 1877. It began
near Petoskey, and extended northeast past Crooked Lake for 28 miles,
averaging 3 or 4 miles wide. The birds arrived in two separate bodies,
one directly from the south by land, the other following the east coast
of Wisconsin, and crossing at Manitou Island. He saw the latter body
come in from the lake at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It was a
compact mass of pigeons, at least 5 miles long by 1 mile wide. The
birds began building when the snow was 12 inches deep in the woods,
although the fields were bare at the time. So rapidly did the colony
extend its boundaries that it soon passed literally over and around
the place where he was netting, although when he began, this point
was several miles from the nearest nest. Nestings usually start in
deciduous woods, but during their progress the pigeons do not skip
any kind of trees they encounter. The Petoskey nesting extended 8
miles through hardwood timber, then crossed a river bottom wooded with
arborvitæ, and thence stretched through white pine woods about 20
miles. For the entire distance of 28 miles every tree of any size had
more or less nests, and many trees were filled with them. None were
lower than about 15 feet above the ground.
"Pigeons are very noisy when building. They make a sound resembling
the croaking of wood frogs. Their combined clamor can be heard 4 or 5
miles away when the atmospheric conditions are favorable. Two eggs are
usually laid, but many nests contain only one. Both birds incubate, the
females between 2 o'clock P.M. and 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock the next
morning; the males from 9 or 10 o'clock A.M. to 2 o'clock P.M. The
males feed twice each day, namely, from daylight to about 8 o'clock
A.M. and again late in the afternoon. The females feed only during the
forenoon. The change is made with great regularity as to time, all the
males being on the nest by 10 o'clock A.M.
"During the morning and evening no females are ever caught by the
netters; during the forenoon no males. The sitting bird does not leave
the nest until the bill of its incoming mate nearly touches its tail,
the former slipping off as the latter takes it place.
"Thus the eggs are constantly covered, and but few are ever thrown out
despite the fragile character of the nests and the swaying of the trees
in the high winds. The old birds never feed in or near the nesting,
leaving all the beech mast, etc., there for their young. Many of them
go 100 miles each day for food. Mr. Stevens is satisfied that pigeons
continue laying and hatching during the entire summer. They do not,
however, use the same nesting place a second time in one season, the
entire colony always moving from 20 to 100 miles after the appearance
of each brood of young. Mr. Stevens, as well as many of the other
netters with whom we talked, believes that they breed during their
absence in the South in the winter, asserting as proof of this that
young birds in considerable numbers often accompany the earlier spring
flights.
"Five weeks are consumed by a single nesting. Then the young are forced
out of their nests by the old birds. Mr. Stevens has twice seen this
done. One of the pigeons, usually the male, pushes the young off the
nest by force. The latter struggles and squeals precisely like a tame
squab, but is finally crowded out along the branch, and after further
feeble resistance flutters down to the ground. Three or four days
elapse before it is able to fly well. Upon leaving the nest it is often
fatter and heavier than the old birds; but it quickly becomes much
thinner and lighter, despite the enormous quantity of food it consumes.
"On one occasion an immense flock of young birds became bewildered in
a fog while crossing Crooked Lake, and descending struck the water and
perished by thousands. The shore for miles was covered a foot or more
deep with them. The old birds rose above the fog, and none were killed.
"At least five hundred men were engaged in netting pigeons during the
great Petoskey nesting of 1881. Mr. Stevens thought that they may
have captured on the average 20,000 birds apiece during the season.
Sometimes two carloads were shipped south on the railroad each day.
Nevertheless he believed that not one bird in a thousand was taken.
Hawks and owls often abound near the nesting. Owls can be heard hooting
there all night long. The cooper's hawk often catches the stool-pigeon.
During the Petoskey season Mr. Stevens lost twelve stool birds in this
way.
"There has been much dispute among writers and observers, beginning
with Audubon and Wilson, and extending down to the present day, as to
whether the wild pigeon has two eggs or one. I questioned Mr. Stevens
closely on this point. He assured me that he had frequently found two
eggs or two young in the same nest, but that fully half the nests which
he had examined contained only one.
"Our personal experience with the pigeon in Michigan was as follows:
"During our stay at Cadillac we saw them daily, sometimes singly,
usually in pairs, never more than two together. Nearly every large
tract of old growth mixed woods seemed to contain at least one pair.
They appeared to be settled for the season, and we were convinced that
they were preparing to breed. In fact, the oviduct of a female, killed
May 10, contained an egg nearly ready for the shell.
"At Oden we had a similar experience, although there were perhaps fewer
pigeons there than about Cadillac.
"On May 24, Mr. Dwight settled any possible question as to their
breeding in scattered pairs, by finding a nest on which he distinctly
saw a bird sitting. The following day I accompanied him to this nest,
which was at least 50 feet above the ground, on the horizontal branch
of a large hemlock, about 20 feet out from the trunk. As we approached
the spot an adult male pigeon started from a tree near that on which
the nest was placed, and a moment later a young bird, with stub tail
and barely able to fly, fluttered feebly after it. This young pigeon
was probably the bird seen the previous day on the nest, for on
climbing to the latter, Mr. Dwight found it empty, but fouled with
excrement, some of which was perfectly fresh. A thorough investigation
of the surrounding woods, which were a hundred acres or more in extent,
and composed chiefly of beeches, with a mixture of white pines and
hemlocks of the largest size, convinced us that no other pigeons were
nesting in them.
"All the netters with whom we talked believe firmly that there are
just as many pigeons in the West as there ever were. They say the
birds have been driven from Michigan and the adjoining States, partly
by persecution, and partly by the destruction of the forests, and
have retreated to uninhabited regions, perhaps north of the Great
Lakes in British North America. Doubtless there is some truth in this
theory; for, that the pigeon is not, as has been asserted so often
recently, on the verge of extinction, is shown by the flight which
passed through Michigan in the Spring of 1888. This flight, according
to the testimony of many reliable observers, was a large one, and
the birds must have formed a nesting of considerable extent in some
region so remote that no news of its presence reached the ears of the
vigilant netters. Thus it is probable that enough Pigeons are left to
restock the West, provided that laws sufficiently stringent to give
them fair protection be at once enacted. The present laws of Michigan
and Wisconsin are simply worse than useless, for, while they prohibit
disturbing the birds _within_ the nesting, they allow unlimited netting
only a few miles beyond its outskirts _during the entire breeding
season_. The theory is, that they are so infinitely numerous that their
ranks are not seriously thinned by catching a few millions of breeding
birds in a summer, and that the only danger to be guarded against is
that of frightening them away by the use of guns or nets in the woods
where their nests are placed. The absurdity of such reasoning is
self-evident, but, singularly enough, the netters, many of whom struck
me as intelligent and honest men, seem really to believe in it. As
they have more or less local influence, and, in addition, the powerful
backing of the large game dealers in the cities, it is not likely that
any really effectual laws can be passed until the last of our Passenger
Pigeons are preparing to follow the great auk and the American bison."
In order to show a little more clearly the immense destruction of the
Passenger Pigeon _in a single year and at one roost_ only, I quote the
following extract from an interesting article "On the Habits, Methods
of Capture, and Nesting of the Wild Pigeon," with an account of the
Michigan nesting of 1878, by Prof. H. B. Roney, in the Chicago _Field_
(Vol. X, pp. 345-347):
"The nesting area, situated near Petoskey, covered something like
100,000 acres of land, and included not less than 150,000 acres within
its limits, being in length about 40 miles by 3 to 10 in width. The
number of dead birds sent by rail was estimated at 12,500 daily, or
1,500,000 for the summer, besides 80,352 live birds; an equal number
was sent by water. We have," says the writer, "adding the thousands
of dead and wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of squabs left
dead in the nest, at the lowest possible estimate, a grand total of one
billion pigeons sacrificed to Mammon during the nesting of 1878."
The last mentioned figure is undoubtedly far above the actual number
killed during that or any other year, but even granting that but a
million were killed at this roost, the slaughter is enormous enough,
and it is not strange that the number of these pigeons are now few,
compared with former years.
Capt. B. F. Goss, of Peewaukee, Wisconsin, writes me: "Ten years
ago the wild pigeon bred in great roosts in the northern parts of
Wisconsin, and it also bred singly in this vicinity; up to six or eight
years ago they were plenty. The nest was a small, rough platform of
twigs, from 10 to 15 feet from the ground. I have often found two eggs
in a nest, but one is by far the more common. These single nests have
been thought by some accidental, but for years they bred in this manner
all over the county, as plentifully as any of our birds. I also found
them breeding singly in Iowa. These single nests have not attracted
attention like the great roosts, but I think it is a common manner of
building with this species."
Mr. Frank J. Thompson, in charge of the Zoölogical Gardens at
Cincinnati, Ohio, gives the following account of the breeding of the
wild pigeon in confinement: "During the spring of 1877, the society
purchased three pairs of trapped birds, which were placed in one of the
outer aviaries. Early in March, 1878, I noticed that they were mating,
and procuring some twigs, I wove three rough platforms, and fastened
them up in convenient places, at the same time throwing a further
supply of building material on the floor. Within twenty-four hours two
of the platforms were selected; the male carrying the material, whilst
the female busied herself in placing it. A single egg was soon laid
in each nest and incubation commenced. On March 16, there was quite
a heavy fall of snow, and on the next morning I was unable to see
the birds on their nests on account of the accumulation of the snow
piled on the platforms around them. Within a couple of days it had all
disappeared, and for the next four or five nights a self-registering
thermometer, hanging in the aviary, marked from 14° to 10°. In spite
of these drawbacks both of the eggs were hatched and the young ones
reared. They have since continued to breed regularly, and now I have
twenty birds, having lost several eggs from falling through their
illy-contrived nests and one old male."
The Passenger Pigeon has been found nesting in Wisconsin and Iowa
during the first week in April, and as late as June 5 and 12 in
Connecticut and Minnesota. Their food consists of beech nuts, acorns,
wild cherries, and berries of various kinds, as well as different kinds
of grain. They are said to be very fond of, and feed extensively on,
angle worms, vast numbers of which frequently come to the surface after
heavy rains, also on hairless caterpillars.
Their movements, at all seasons, seem to be very irregular, and are
greatly affected by the food supply. They may be exceedingly common
at one point one year, and almost entirely wanting the next. They
generally winter south of latitude 36°.
Their notes during the mating season are said to be a short "coo-coo,"
and the ordinary call note is a "kee-kee-kee," the first syllable being
louder and the last fainter than the middle one.
Opinions differ as to the number of broods in a season; while the
majority of observers assert that but one, a few others say that two,
are usually raised. The eggs vary in number from one to two in a
set, and incubation lasts from eighteen to twenty days, both sexes
assisting. These eggs are pure white in color, slightly glossy, and
usually elliptical oval in shape; some may be called broad elliptical
oval.
The average measurements of twenty specimens in the U. S. National
Museum collection is 37.5 by 26.5 millimetres. The largest egg measures
39.5 by 28.5, the smallest 33.5 by 26 millimetres.
CHAPTER VII
Netting the Pigeons
By William Brewster, from "The Auk," a Quarterly Journal of
Ornithology, October, 1889.
In the spring of 1888 my friend, Captain Bendire, wrote to me that
he had received news from a correspondent in central Michigan to the
effect that wild pigeons had arrived there in large numbers and were
preparing to nest. Acting on this information I started at once, in
company with Mr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., to visit the expected "nesting"
and learn as much as possible about the habits of the breeding birds,
as well as to secure specimens of their skins and eggs.
... Pigeon netting in Michigan is conducted as follows: Each netter
has three beds; at least two, and sometimes as many as ten "strikes"
are made on a single bed in one day, but the bed is often allowed to
"rest" for a day or two. Forty or fifty dozen birds are a good haul for
one "strike." Often only ten or twelve dozen are taken. Mr. Stevens'
highest "catch" is eighty-six dozen, but once he saw one hundred and
six dozen captured at a single "strike." If too large a number are on
the bed, they will sometimes raise the net bodily and escape. Usually
about one-third are too quick for the net and fly out before it falls.
Two kinds of beds are used, the "mud" bed and the "dry" bed. The former
is the most killing in Michigan, but, for unknown reason, it will not
attract birds in Wisconsin.
It is made of mud, kept in a moist condition and saturated with a
mixture of saltpeter and anise seed. Pigeons are very fond of salt
and resort to salt springs wherever they occur. The dry bed is simply
a level space of ground carefully cleared of grass, weeds, etc., and
baited with corn or other grain. Pigeons are peculiar, and their habits
must be studied by the netter if he would be successful. When they are
feeding on beech mast, they often will not touch grain of any kind, and
the mast must be used for bait.
A stool bird is an essential part of the netter's outfit. It is tied
on a box, and by an ingenious arrangement of cords, by which it can be
gently raised or lowered, is made to flap its wings at intervals. This
attracts the attention of passing birds which alight on the nearest
tree, or on a perch which is usually provided for that purpose. After a
portion of the flock has descended to the bed, they are started up by
"raising" the stool bird, and fly back to the perch. When they fly down
a second time all or nearly all the others follow or accompany them and
the net is "struck."
The usual method of killing pigeons is to break their necks with a
small pair of pincers, the ends of which are bent so that they do
not quite meet. Great care must be taken not to shed blood on the
bed, for the pigeons notice this at once and are much alarmed by it.
Young birds can be netted in wheat stubble in the autumn, but this is
seldom attempted. When just able to fly, however, they are caught in
enormous numbers near the "nestings" in pens made of slats. A few dozen
old pigeons are confined in the pens as decoys, and a net is thrown
over the mouth of the pen when a sufficient number of young birds have
entered it.
Mr. Stevens has known over four hundred dozen young pigeons to be
taken at once by this method. The first birds sent to market yield
the netter about one dollar a dozen. At the height of the season the
price sometimes falls as low as twelve cents a dozen. It averages about
twenty-five cents.
CHAPTER VIII
Efforts to Check the Slaughter
By Prof. H. B. Roney, East Saginaw, Mich.
The following article appeared in "American Field," of Chicago, Jan.
11, 1879. Parts omitted here referred to an ineffectual attempt on the
part of the Saginaw and Bay City Game Protection Clubs to put a stop
to the illegal netting and shooting of pigeons. The Michigan law was
a bungling piece of business, working rather in the interest of the
netters than of the birds. Prof. Roney and Mr. McLean accompanied the
two representatives of the Game Protective Clubs sent North on this
mission. I make this explanation as certain parts of the article I
reproduce would otherwise not be as well understood.
For many years Passenger Pigeon nestings have been established in
Michigan, and by a noticeable concurrence, only in even alternate
years, as follows: 1868, 1870, 1872, 1874, 1876, 1878. In 1876 there
were no less than three nestings in the State, one each in Newaygo,
Oceana, and Grand Traverse counties.
Large numbers of professional "pigeoners," as they term themselves,
devote their whole time to the business of following up and netting
wild pigeons for gain and profit. These men carefully study the habits
and direction of flight of the birds, and in the spring of the year can
tell with considerable accuracy in about what locality a nesting is
to form. The indications are soon known throughout the fraternity and
the gathering of the clans commences. The netters follow up the pigeons
in their flight for hundreds of miles. The past year there have been
nestings in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, though in the former two
States they were of short duration, as they soon broke up and the birds
turned their flight to the northwest. The flight of a pigeon is, under
favorable conditions, sixty to ninety miles an hour, and these birds
of passage leaving the Pennsylvania forests at daybreak can reach the
Michigan nesting grounds by sunset.
Many of the little travellers came from the westward, crossing the
stormy waters of the lake with the speed of a dart. From the four
quarters of the globe, seemingly, they gather. Over the mountains,
lakes, rivers, and prairies they speed their aërial flight, through
storm, in sunshine and rain. Actuated as if by a common impulse toward
the same object, their swift wings soon reach the summer nursery,
to which they are drawn from points hundreds of miles distant by an
instinct which surpasses human comprehension.
No less remarkable is the wisdom with which the nesting places are
chosen, they being always in the densest woods, not in large and heavy
timber, but generally in smaller trees with many branches, cedars,
and saplings. The presence of large quantities of mast, which is the
principal food of these birds, especially beech nuts, is a prominent
consideration in the selection of a nesting ground. As the feed in the
vicinity of the nesting becomes exhausted, the birds are compelled to
go daily farther and farther for food, even as high as seventy-five or
one hundred miles, and these trips, which are taken twice a day, are
known as the morning and evening flights.
The apparatus for the capture of wild pigeons consists of a net about
six feet wide and twenty to thirty feet long. The operator first
chooses the location for setting his net, which, it is needless to
add, is in utter disregard of the State law, which prescribes certain
limits within which nets must not be placed. A bed of a creek or low
marshy spot is chosen, if possible at a natural salt lick, or a bed
of muck, upon which the birds feed. The ground is cleared of grass
and weeds, and to allure the birds the bed is "baited" with salt and
sulphur several days before the net is to be placed. A bough house is
made about twenty feet from the end of the bed, and all is ready for
the net and its victims. A bird discovers the tempting spot, and with
the instinct of the honey-bee, returns and brings several others, while
these in turn bring a multitude, and in less than two days the bed is
fairly blue with birds feeding on the seasoned muck.
The net is then set by an adjustment of ropes and a powerful spring
pole, the net being laid along one side of the bed, and the operator
retires to his bough house, through which the ropes run, where he
waits concealed for the flights.
Many trappers use two nets ranged along opposite sides of the bed,
which are thrown toward each other and meet in the center. When enough
birds are gathered upon the beds to make a profitable throw, the
operator gives a quick jerk upon the rope, the net flies over in an
instant, while in its meshes struggle hundreds of unwilling prisoners.
After pinching their necks the trapper removes the dead victims, resets
the trap, and is ready for another haul. To lure down the birds from
their flight overhead, most netters use "fliers" or "stool-pigeons."
The former are birds held captive by a cord, tied to the leg, being
thrown up into the air when a flight is observed approaching, and drawn
fluttering down when the "flier" has reached its limit. The latter is a
live pigeon tied to a small circular framework of wood or wire attached
to the end of a slender and elastic pole, which is raised and lowered
by the trapper from his place of concealment by a stout cord and which
causes constant fluttering. A good stool-pigeon (one which will stay
upon the stool) is rather difficult to obtain, and is worth from $5 to
$25. Many trappers use the same birds for several years in succession.
The number of pigeons caught in a day by an expert trapper will seem
incredible to one who has not witnessed the operation. A fair average
is sixty to ninety dozen birds per day per net and some trappers will
not spring a net upon less than ten dozen birds. Higher figures than
these are often reached, as in the case of one trapper who caught and
delivered 2,000 dozen pigeons in ten days, being 200 dozen, or about
2,500 birds per day. A double net has been known to catch as high as
1,332 birds at a single throw, while at natural salt licks, their
favorite resort, 300 and 400 dozen, or about 5,000 birds have been
caught in a single day by one net.
The prices of dead birds range from thirty-five cents to forty cents
per dozen at the nesting. In Chicago markets fifty to sixty cents.
Squabs twelve cents per dozen in the woods, in metropolitan markets
sixty cents to seventy cents. In fashionable restaurants they are
served as a delicious tid-bit at fancy prices. Live birds are worth
at the trapper's net forty cents to sixty cents per dozen; in cities
$1 to $2. It can thus be easily seen that the business, when at all
successful, is a very profitable one, for from the above quotations a
pencil will quickly figure out an income of $10 to $40 per day for the
"poor and hard-working pigeon trapper." One "pigeoner" at the Petoskey
nesting was reported to be worth $60,000, all made in that business. He
must have slain at least three million pigeons to gain this amount of
money.
For several years violations of the laws protecting pigeons in brooding
time have been notorious in the Michigan nestings. Professional
"pigeoners" did not for an instant pretend to observe the law, and a
lax and indifferent public opinion permitted the illegal slaughter
to go on without let or hindrance, while itinerant pigeon trappers
from all parts of the United States, grew rich at the expense of the
commonwealth, and in intentional violation of its laws. Each succeeding
year the news has been spread far and wide until it became useless
to conceal the fact that pigeon trapping was a profitable business,
the year of 1876 witnessing a magnitude in the traffic which exceeded
anything heretofore known in the country.
In the early part of March last, a pigeon nesting formed just north
of Petoskey, Michigan. Not many days had passed before information
was conveyed to the game protection clubs of East Saginaw and Bay
City, that enormous quantities of pigeons were being killed in open
and defiant violation of the law. On reaching Petoskey we found the
condition of affairs had not been magnified; indeed, it exceeded
our gravest fears. Here, a few miles north, was a pigeon nesting of
irregular dimensions, estimated by those best qualified to judge, to
be forty (40) miles in length, by three to ten in width, probably the
largest nesting that has ever existed in the United States, covering
something like 100,000 acres of land, and including not less than
150,000 acres within its limits.
At the hotel we met one we were glad to see, in the person of "Uncle
Len" Jewell, of Bay City, an old woodsman and "land-looker." Len had
for several weeks been looking land in the upper peninsula, and was
on his return home. At our solicitation he agreed to remain for two
or three days, and co-operate with us. In the village nothing else
seemed to be thought of but pigeons. It was the one absorbing topic
everywhere. The "pigeoners" hurried hither and thither, comparing
market reports, and soliciting the latest quotations on "squabs." A
score of hands in the packing-houses were kept busy from daylight until
dark. Wagon load after wagon load of dead and live birds hauled up to
the station, discharged their freight, and returned to the nesting for
more. The freight house was filled with the paraphernalia of the pigeon
hunter's vocation, while every train brought acquisitions to their
numbers, and scores of nets, stool-pigeons, etc.
The pigeoners were everywhere. They swarmed in the hotels, postoffice,
and about the streets. They were there, as careful inquiry and the
hotel registers showed, from New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Maryland, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Maine,
Minnesota, and Missouri.
Hiring a team, we started on a tour of investigation through the
nesting. Long before reaching it our course was directed by the birds
over our heads, flying back and forth to their feeding grounds. After
riding about fifteen miles, we discovered a wagon-track leading into
the woods, in the direction of the bird sounds which came to our ears.
Three of the party left the wagon and followed it; the twittering
grew louder and louder, the birds more numerous, and in a few minutes
we were in the midst of that marvel of the forest and Nature's
wonderland--the pigeon nesting.
We stood and gazed in bewilderment upon the scene around and above us.
Was it indeed a fairyland we stood upon, or did our eyes deceive us. On
every hand, the eye would meet these graceful creatures of the forest,
which, in their delicate robes of blue, purple and brown, darted hither
and thither with the quickness of thought. Every bough was bending
under their weight, so tame one could almost touch them, while in every
direction, crossing and recrossing, the flying birds drew a network
before the dizzy eyes of the beholder, until he fain would close his
eyes to shut out the bewildering scene.
This portion of the nesting was the first formed, and the young birds
were just ready to leave the nests. Scarcely a tree could be seen but
contained from five to fifty nests, according to its size and branches.
Directed by the noise of chopping and falling trees, we followed on,
and soon came upon the scene of action.
Here was a large force of Indians and boys at work, slashing down the
timber and seizing the young birds as they fluttered from the nest.
As soon as caught, the heads were jerked off from the tender bodies
with the hand, and the dead birds tossed into heaps. Others knocked
the young fledglings out of the nests with long poles, their weak
and untried wings failing to carry them beyond the clutches of the
assistant, who, with hands reeking with blood and feathers, tears the
head off the living bird, and throws its quivering body upon the heap.
Thousands of young birds lay among the ferns and leaves dead, having
been knocked out of the nests by the promiscuous tree-slashing, and
dying for want of nourishment and care, which the parent birds, trapped
off by the netter, could not give. The squab-killers stated that "about
one-half of the young birds in the nests they found dead," owing to the
latter reason. Every available Indian, man and boy, in the neighborhood
was in the employ of buyers and speculators, killing squabs, for which
they received a cent apiece.
Early in the morning, Len, with his land-looker's pack and half-ax, and
the writer, started out to "look land." Taking the course indicated
by the obliging small boy, we soon struck into an old Indian trail
which led us through another portion of the nesting, where the birds
for countless numbers surpassed all calculation. The chirping and
noise of wings were deafening and conversation, to be audible, had
to be carried on at the top of our voices. On the shores of the lake
where the birds go to drink, when flushed by an intruder, the rush
of wings of the gathered millions was like the roar of thunder and
perfectly indescribable. An hour's walk brought us to a ravine which we
cautiously approached.
Directed by the commotion in the air, we soon discovered the bough
house and net of the trapper. Evidence being what we sought, we stood
concealed behind some bushes to await the spring of the trap. The black
muck bed soon became blue and purple with pigeons lured by the salt and
sulphur, when suddenly the net was sprung over with a "whiz," retaining
hundreds of birds beneath it, while those outside its limits flew to
adjacent trees. We now descended from the brink of the hill to the net,
and there beheld a sickening sight not soon forgotten.
On one side of the bed of a little creek was spread the net, a double
one, covering an area when thrown, of about ten by twenty feet. Through
its meshes were stretched the heads of the fluttering captives vainly
struggling to escape. In the midst of them stood a stalwart pigeoner
up to his knees in the mire and bespattered with mud and blood from
head to foot. Passing from bird to bird, with a pair of blacksmith's
pincers, he gave the neck of each a cruel grip with his remorseless
weapon, causing the blood to burst from the eyes and trickle down the
beak of the helpless captive, which slowly fluttered its life away,
its beautiful plumage besmeared with filth and its bed dyed with its
crimson blood. When all were dead, the net was raised, many still
clinging to its meshes with beak and claws in their death grip and were
shaken off. They were then gathered, counted, deposited behind a log
with many others and covered with bushes, and the death trap set for
another harvest.
Scarcely able to conceal our indignation, we sat upon the bank and
questioned this hero, learning that he had pursued the business for
years, and had caught as high as 87 dozen in one day, learning later
that he caught and killed upon that day, 82 dozen, or 984 birds. This
outrage was perpetrated within 100 rods of the nests and in plain
hearing of the nesting sounds, instead of two miles away, as the law
prescribes. After gaining some further information, the old gray-headed
land-looker and his companion withdrew, bidding the pigeon pirate
good-day, and leaving him none the wiser for the visit. Out of sight
we worked our way back to the road, overtook the stage and returned to
Petoskey. The next day the writer swore out a warrant and caused the
arrest of the offender, who could not do otherwise than plead guilty,
and had the satisfaction of seeing him pay over his fine of $50 for his
poor knowledge of distances.
The shooting done at the nesting was in the most flagrant violation of
the protective laws. The five-mile limit was a dead letter. The shotgun
brigade went where they listed, and shot the birds in the nesting as
they sat in rows on the trees or passed in clouds overhead. Before we
arrived, a party of four men shot 826 birds in one day and then only
stopping from sheer fatigue. Other parties continued the fusillade
until the guns became so foul they could not be used, and would return
to the village with a wagon-box full of birds. Scores of dead pigeons
were left on the grounds to decay, and the woods were full of wounded
ones. H. Frayer, a justice of the peace, informed us that a few days
previously he had picked up fifteen maimed birds, his neighbor, a Mr.
Green, twenty, and a Mr. Crossman, thirty-six, all in one day, after a
shooting party had passed through.
The news of the formation of the nesting was not long in reaching the
various Indian settlements near Petoskey, and the aborigines came in
tens and fifties and in hordes. Some were armed with guns, but the
majority were provided with powerful bows, and arrows with round, flat
heads two or three inches in diameter. With these they shot under or
into the nests, knocked out the squabs to the ground, and raked the
old birds which loaded the branches. For miles the roads leading to
the nesting were swarming with Indians, big and little, old and young,
squaws, pappooses, bucks and young braves, on ponies, in carts and on
foot. Each family brought its kit of cooking utensils, axes, a stock of
provisions, tubs, barrels and firkins to pack the birds in, and came
intending to carry on the business until the nesting broke up. In some
sections the woods were literally full of them.
[Illustration: UPPER SPECIMEN, PASSENGER PIGEON (_Ectopistes
Migratoria_)
LOWER SPECIMEN, MOURNING DOVE (_Zenaidura Macroura_)
Frequently mistaken for Passenger Pigeon]
With the aid of Sheriff Ingalls, who spoke their language like a
native, we one day drove over 400 Indians out of the nesting, and
their retreat back to their farms would have rivaled Bull Run. Five
hundred more were met on the road to the nesting and turned back. The
number of pigeons these two hordes would have destroyed would have
been incalculable. Noticing a handsome bow in the hands of a young
Indian, who proved to a son of the old chief, Petoskey, a piece of
silver caused its transfer to us, with the remark, "Keene, kensau, mene
sic" (now you can go and shoot pigeons), which dusky joke seemed to be
appreciated by the rest of the young chief's companions.
There are in the United States about 5,000 men who pursue pigeons
year after year as a business. Pigeon hunters with whom we conversed
incognito stated that of this number there were between 400 and 500
at the Petoskey nesting plying their vocation with as many nests, and
more arriving upon every train from all parts of the United States.
When it is remembered that the village was alive with pigeoners, that
nearly every house in the vast area of territory covered by the nesting
sheltered one to six pigeon men, and that many camped out in the woods,
the figures will not seem improbable. Every homesteader in the country
who owned or could hire an ox team or pair of horses, was engaged in
hauling birds to Petoskey for shipment, for which they received $4 per
wagon load. To "keep peace in the family" and avoid complaint, the
pigeon men fitted up many of the settlers with nets, and instructed
them in the art of trapping.
Added to these were the buyers, shippers, packers, Indians and boys,
making not less than 2,000 persons (some placed it at 2,500) engaged
in the traffic at this one nesting. Fully fifty teams were engaged
in hauling birds to the railroad station. The road was carpeted with
feathers, and the wings and feathers from the packing-houses were used
by the wagon load to fill up the mud holes in the road for miles out of
town. For four men to attempt to effect a work, having for opponents
the entire country, residents and non-residents included, was no slight
task.
The majority of the pigeoners were a reckless, hard set of men, but
their repeated threats that they would "buckshot us" if we interfered
with them in the woods failed to inspire the awe that was intended. It
was four against 2,000. What was accomplished against such fearful odds
may be seen by the following:
The regular shipments by rail before the party commenced operations
were sixty barrels per day. On the 16th of April, just after our
arrival, they fell to thirty-five barrels, and on the 17th down to
twenty barrels per day, while on the 22d the shipments were only eight
barrels of pigeons. On the Sunday previous there were shipped by
steamer to Chicago 128 barrels of dead birds and 108 crates of live
birds. On the next Sabbath following our arrival the shipments were
only forty-three barrels and fifty-two crates. Thus it will be seen
that some little good was accomplished, but that little was included
in a very few days of the season, for the treasury of the home clubs
would not admit of keeping their representatives longer at the nesting,
the State clubs, save one, did not respond to the call for assistance,
and the men were recalled, after which the Indians went back into the
nesting, and the wanton crusade was renewed by pigeoners and all hands
with an energy which indicated a determination to make up for lost time.
The first shipment of birds from Petoskey was upon March 22, and the
last upon August 12, making over twenty weeks, or five months, that the
bird war was carried on. For many weeks the railroad shipments averaged
fifty barrels of dead birds per day--thirty to forty dozen old birds
and about fifty dozen squabs being packed in a barrel. Allowing 500
birds to a barrel, and averaging the entire shipments for the season at
twenty-five barrels per day, we find the rail shipments to have been
12,500 dead birds daily, or 1,500,000 for the summer. Of live birds
there were shipped 1,116 crates, six dozen per crate, or 80,352 birds.
These were the rail shipments only, and not including the cargoes by
steamers from Petoskey, Cheboygan, Cross Village and other lake ports,
which were as many more. Added to this were the daily express shipments
in bags and boxes, the wagon loads hauled away by the shotgun brigade,
the thousands of dead and wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of
squabs dead in the nest by trapping off of the parent birds soon after
hatching (for a young pigeon will surely die if deprived of its parents
during the first week of its life), and we have at the lowest possible
estimate a grand total of 1,000,000,000 pigeons sacrificed to Mammon
during the nesting of 1878.
The task undertaken in behalf of justice and humanity was a Herculean
one, but backed up by such true sportsmen as A. H. Mershon and Wm. J.
Loveland, of East Saginaw, and Judge Holmes, S. A. Van Dusen, D. H.
Fitzhugh, Jr., and others of Bay City, as well as by the sentiment of
every humane citizen of the State, we could not do other than follow
the advice of Davy Crockett, and being sure we were right, we decided
to "go ahead." The question of a wise protection to the game and fish
of our State is one in which the writer holds a deep and fervent
interest, and in serving this cause, he will swerve from no duty, nor
shrink from consequences in the discharge of that duty.
The foregoing article is the result of an honest conviction that the
best interests of the State demanded a full exposure of the methods by
which the pigeon is threatened with extinction.
AMONG THE PIGEONS.
A Reply to Professor Roney's Account of
the Michigan Nestings of 1878.
--BY--
E. T. MARTIN,
In the Chicago Field, Jan. 25, 1879.
[Illustration]
E. T. Martin's Headquarters at Boyne Falls, Michigan, during the
Nesting of 1878.
[Illustration]
Fac-simile reproduction of circular, issued 1879, showing E. T.
Martin's pigeon headquarters at Boyne Falls, Mich.
CHAPTER IX
The Pigeon Butcher's Defense
By E. T. Martin, from the "American Field," Chicago, January 25, 1879.
The preceding chapter by Prof. H. B. Roney in _American Field_, was
answered by E. T. Martin, a game dealer of Chicago, who afterwards
issued a pamphlet, the first page of which is herewith reproduced, and
I make quite extensive extracts from the body of the circular, which
incidentally advertises Martin as "the largest dealer in live pigeons
for trap shooting in the world, also a dealer in guns, glass balls,
traps, nets, etc."
I call the reader's attention to the following:
In the table given of the shipments from Petoskey and Boyne Falls,
etc., during 1878, Martin estimates the number shipped alive from
Cheboygan as 89,730, yet H. T. Phillips of Detroit, shows from his
records that he alone shipped from that point 175,000 that year. So if
Martin's estimates are all as far wrong as this one, he should account
for a total shipment of over 2,000,000 pigeons.
In Martin's circular, he seems to take offense at some remarks Prof.
Roney has made in this article that reflect upon the character of
these netters, for Martin uses in quotation marks the following: "A
reckless, hard set of men, pirates, etc.," which seems to have some
foundation in fact, as Martin says: "In proof of the pigeons feeding
squab indiscriminately, I may mention the fact that one of the men
in my employ this year, while at the Shelby nesting in 1876 in one
afternoon shot and killed six hen pigeons that came to feed the one
squab in the same nest." Further comment is unnecessary.--W. B. M.
A little after the middle of March a body of birds began nesting some
twelve miles north of Petoskey, near Pickerel Lake. About April 8
another and larger body "set in" along Maple and Indian Rivers, and
Burt Lake, and near Cross Village, there being in all some seven or
eight distinct nestings, covering perhaps, of territory actually
occupied by the nesting, a tract some fifteen miles long and three of
average width, or forty-five square miles.
The principal catch was made from the Crooked and Maple rivers
nestings, and when the former "broke," which was about May 25, the
pigeoners pulled up and left, many going home, and others to the Boyne
Falls nesting, some thirty miles south, which "set in" at about the
same time. This gave a duration of two and one-third months to the
Petoskey nesting proper, though it is true that, feed being abundant,
some very few birds remained around, roosting for a little longer.
The Boyne Falls nesting lasted something over a month and broke early
in July; from this the catch was very light. After that, the only catch
was a few young birds taken "on bait."
Besides these nestings, there was one further south on the Manistee
River, some twenty-six miles long by five average width, or 130 square
miles, in which the birds hatched three times, and from which not a
bird was caught, as it was an impenetrable swamp, and the putting of
birds on the market would be attended with such expense as to destroy
the profit. There were also one or two smaller ones, east of this
one. These comprised the Michigan nestings, in addition to which, at
Sheffield, Pa., there was fully as large a body, and fully as large a
catch as at the Crooked and Maple nestings, the birds hatching there,
I think, three times, each hatching taking four weeks, from the
beginning of nest building to the time the old birds leave the young.
It is true, however, that birds were shipped from Petoskey the middle
of August, but they were birds belonging to me that I was holding there
for a market, my Chicago pens being full. Every bird of them had been
in my possession for a month previous, and many for six weeks. So the
actual pigeon business lasted not five months, as Prof. Roney says, but
about three; part of which time the total catch was not fifty dozen per
day.
* * * * *
They (Prof. Roney et al.) came to Petoskey with a great flourish of
trumpets, hired expensive livery rigs to ride around the country in,
made one or two arrests, secured one conviction by default, were
defeated in every case that came to trial, had one of the party play
the rôle of "terrible example" in the trout case, and then went home,
and in the face of the fact that they had eaten, or known of having
been eaten, hundreds of pigeons, and of the certainty that the report
was false, had published in the Saginaw paper a report that the pigeons
then being caught in Michigan were feeding on poisoned berries, and
the using them for food had caused much sickness, and in one or two
instances loss of life.
This was not only published in the home papers, but was telegraphed
to New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati, and marked
copies of the notice sent to the press of neighboring cities, the
avowed object being to cause such a decline in price as to force the
netters to quit. It was based on the idea that most of them were men of
small means, and that unless ready market offered for their birds, they
must give out. The effect was to cause a drop in price of fifty cents
a dozen in New York and Boston in a single day, to cause the price in
Chicago to decline to twenty cents per dozen, and to take the last
cent out of the pockets of a hundred netters, leaving many who became
discouraged and had to walk long distances to their homes, dependent on
chance for even a mouthful to eat. Many, though, held out. Telegrams
of denial were sent, and the market in a week or two rallied somewhat,
though it was a month before prices in the East touched the same figure
as when the "poison-berry" telegrams were received. During the week
when prices were lowest I refused to buy many dead birds offered me
at five cents per dozen, preferring to lend the netter money, or to
advance it on his next catch to be saved alive.
And, by the way, let me say that killing the pigeons by pincers is an
instantaneous and painless death, the neck being broken by a single
movement, and the fluttering spoken of being the same seen in any bird
shot through the head, or with the head cut off. But had the market
remained unbroken, had this infamous poisoned berry story never been
started, no such net results in way of profit would have been reached
as Prof. Roney says. Under very favorable circumstances, a good netter
in such a season as we had in 1878, would make from $100 to $200, but
by far the larger portion would not reach $100 over expenses.
At the Crooked and Maple nestings day in and day out the average catch
was about twenty dozen per day to each net and two men. These sold,
except immediately after the "poisoned berry story," at from twenty to
thirty cents per dozen head, at the net, or if the catcher was saving
alive, in which case his catch would be one-third smaller, owing to the
trouble of handling the live birds, he would get from thirty-five to
forty-five cents.
The principal object in saving them alive was that no birds spoiled
from warm weather, and at my pens close by the nesting they would be
received at any hour, while to sell dead birds it was necessary to
depend on some chance buyer or to haul to Petoskey, fourteen miles
distant. At Boyne Falls prices were a little higher, say twenty-five
for dead and fifty cents for live, but the average catch was not five
dozen per day to each net. There were exceptions both ways, which
went of course to make up the average, the most notable being that of
the 2,000 dozen caught by one party, not in ten days, but in twenty,
employing two nets and six men. This I know, for I was at the net and
saw part of the catching, while Prof. Roney never got that far. This
2,000 dozen was shipped East and netted the catchers just fifteen
cents a dozen at the net, or $300 for twenty days' work for six men and
two nets, while on the other hand, during the same time, many better
catchers who had not been lucky in location hadn't made enough to pay
for board. Names, locations, etc., can be furnished if Prof. Roney
desires.
The Professor then goes on to lament his failure before our Emmett
County jury. The reason why is very simple, _he never proved his
case_. This whole pigeon trade was a perfect Godsend to a large
portion of Emmett County. The land outside of Petoskey is taken up
by homesteaders, who, between clearing their land, scanty crops,
poor soil, large families, and small capital, are poorer than Job's
turkey's prodigal son, and in years past have had all they could do
fighting famine and cold, and but a year or so since all Michigan was
sending relief to keep them from starving, thousands of dollars being
contributed, and then most harrowing tales being told of need and
destitution.
The "pirates and bummers" left some $35,000 in good greenbacks right
among the most needy of these people. Many were enabled to buy a team,
others to clear more land, more to increase their crops, and all to lay
in provisions and clothing to meet the bitter winter we are now passing
through, and this money did more to open up Emmett County than years
of ordinary work. It put scores of honest, hard-working homesteaders
on their feet; it increased trade, and, if sent by a special act of
Providence, could not have done more good. Such being the case, can any
blame be given an Emmett County jury if they required evidence direct
and to the point before convicting? And in no case that came to trial
was direct evidence given. So the four true "sportsmen" there in behalf
of justice and humanity, had such a cold reception from all, that they
concluded strategy beat that kind of work all to death, pulled up
stakes and hurried home, and worked up the poisoned berry business.
* * * * *
Now, about the merciless slaughter. Prof. Roney estimates 1,500,000
dead and 80,000 live birds as the shipments, and then goes on to say
that _one billion_ birds have been destroyed! What logic.
I have official figures before me, and they show that the shipments
from Petoskey and Boyne Falls were:
Petoskey, dead, by express 490,000
Petoskey, alive, by express 86,400
Boyne Falls, dead 47,100
Boyne Falls, alive 42,696
Petoskey, dead, by boat, estimated 110,000
Petoskey, alive, by boat, estimated 33,640
Cheboygan, dead, by boat, estimated 108,300
Cheboygan, alive, by boat, estimated 89,730
Other points, dead and alive, estimated 100,000
---------
Total 1,107,866
This may be set down as accurate or nearly so, and 1,500,000 will
cover the total destruction of birds by net, gun and Indians. The
total number of nesting squabs taken by the Indians would not reach
100,000 and not over fifty barrels of these ever reached a market,
the Indians smoking the remainder for winter use. No one knows how
many birds 1,500,000 are until they see them, and handle a few. As an
illustration: To buy and sell 125,000 birds in four months, it took
myself, two men and a boy all our time, working from daylight until
after dark every day.
I doubt if there were a billion birds in all the Crooked and Maple
nestings. I am certain that there were not at any one time. I am also
certain that more than double as many young birds left those nestings
than all the birds caught, killed or destroyed. The morning that the
Crooked nesting broke, I was out at daylight, and at the net to see and
help one of my men make a strike; for an hour and a half a continuous
body of birds half a mile wide and very thick was going out; our strike
was twenty-nine dozen, twenty-five dozen young and four dozen old,
about the same proportion as the other catchers. This showed that of
the immense body over five-sixths were young birds, barely old enough
ones remaining to guide the body of young, and this was out of the
nesting from which the bulk of the birds had been caught, where the
destruction had been the greatest. When it is considered that the
Manistee birds hatched three times unmolested, that there was a body
several times larger there, than at the Crooked and Maple, and that
many from each body went further north entirely out of reach and nested
at least once, possibly twice again, some idea may be formed of the
immense addition to the army of pigeons from the Michigan nestings of
1878. Many more young birds left the Crooked River nesting alone, than
all, old or young, destroyed during the entire season's pigeoning.
Prof. Roney's lament about the young dying when deprived of the parent
bird, and his addition to the number "sacrificed to Mammon" from that
source, compares favorably with the poisoned berry story, or the attack
on Turner. Admitting that 1,500,000 birds were caught and killed, not
more than half of these would be old birds, some of which would not be
nesting, and from some of which the young had left the nest. If for
every one of the 750,000 old birds caught and killed, the squab had
died, this would make a total slaughter of 2,250,000, or about one four
hundred and fiftieth of the number he says.
I don't believe Prof. Roney knows what a billion is. However, there
were not 750,000, no, nor 100,000 squabs killed by losing their
parents. It is a well-proved fact that the old bird coming in will stop
and feed any squab heard crying for food, that in this way they look
out for one another's young, and the orphans or half-orphans are cared
for. It is rare, however, for both old birds to be caught or killed,
since the toms and hens when nesting always fly separately, and the
chance of both the parents of the squab falling a "victim to Mammon,"
particularly in a large nesting, is small. As proof of the pigeons
feeding squabs indiscriminately, I may mention that one of the men in
my employ this year, at the Shelby nesting in 1876, in one afternoon
shot and killed six hen pigeons that came to _feed_ the _one squab_ in
the _same nest_.
* * * * *
Why, Prof. Roney, the catch went on all the same, your party made no
difference of note, but the weather was rough and somewhat stormy; the
birds didn't "stool" well, and during the days mentioned the catch was
very small, hence the decrease in shipments. Now, regarding the law, it
is well enough as it is; one shotgun near a nesting is more destructive
than a dozen nets; the report of the gun causes the birds to rise in
thousands, and, when repeated, to leave in a body, regardless of nest
or squab, and never to return; as an example, may be mentioned, the
Minnesota nesting of 1877, when the birds were driven entirely away.
The net is silent; its work occasions no alarm; it makes no cripples,
consequently it can be admitted nearer to the nests than its more noisy
partner. Protect the pigeons entirely, and a law forbidding catching
during nesting time is equivalent to entire protection, and you have
northern Michigan overrun with a pest that will destroy the farmer's
seed as fast as sown, and when harvest time approaches, pounce upon a
wheat field ready for the reaper and in an hour not leave even enough
for the gleaner. Their increase would be more rapid, their stay longer,
and in four years not only would the law be repealed, but inducements
to slaughter would be held out to rid the State of the rapidly
increasing and destructive pests.
The pigeon never will be exterminated so long as forests large enough
for their nestings and mast enough for their food remain.
In conclusion, the pigeons are as much an article of commerce as wheat,
corn, hogs, beeves, or sheep. It is no more cruel to kill them for
market by the thousand, than it is to countenance the killing at the
stock yards in this or any other large commercial center. The paper
to-night shows that in six cities over four million hogs have been
killed since Nov. 1, 1878, or two and a half months, a larger slaughter
than, during the same time, of pigeons at the nestings by nearly
threefold. Yet this is not "sacrificing to Mammon." A farmer can market
his poultry dead or alive at any time of the year, and the slaughter,
the country over, is larger than that of pigeons, yet no one in the
interest of "justice and humanity" interferes.
The pigeon is migratory, it can care for itself. It nests in the
impenetrable wilds of Arkansas, the Indian Territory, Canada and
British America, as often as in the land of civilization where it
can be reached for market. It is a source of profit to the poor, or
pleasure to the rich. Its benefits to the Emmett County homesteaders,
as felt through the cold of this winter alone, are enough to compensate
for evils even as black as our Prof. Roney paints, and Emmett County is
but a sample of whatever location the birds may settle in.
Let the law, in regard to distance, stand as it is. Enforce it against
all alike; make no exceptions; let the rule of supply and demand
govern the catchings, and you will have something better than all
the professors in Michigan suggest. Let the supply be so large that
prices are low and wages can't be made, and law or no law, the catching
will stop. But don't make a law that will take bread out of the
homesteader's mouth, and work from hundreds of poor and honest men; no,
not even if the birds should be sacrificed, to a certain extent, for
man is above the beasts, and the "beasts of the field and the birds of
the air" are given unto him for his benefit and his profit.
[Illustration: H. T. PHILLIPS' STORE
A typical game store of the early 70's]
CHAPTER X
Notes of a Vanished Industry
I have corresponded with many men who were actively interested in
hunting and observing the Passenger Pigeon when its flocks still
numbered uncounted millions of birds. Some of the data supplied in
kind response to my queries is in the form of hastily jotted notes,
which, when they are brought together, include more or less repetition
of personal experiences. They have a certain value, however, when
taken _en masse_, for they are the testimony of eye-witnesses who will
soon be gone, after which the Passenger Pigeon will become as much a
matter of written history and tradition as the auk or the buffalo.
I am under obligation to Mr. Henry T. Phillips, of Detroit, for much
practical information regarding the capture of pigeons, and the
business of marketing them as he knew it in those earlier days. There
follows a portion of a letter written me by Mr. Phillips in October,
1904.--W. B. M.
I am in receipt of your letter asking for information about the wild
pigeon, but I do not know that I can be of much benefit to you, though
I will give you what information I can.
I began business in Cheboygan, Mich., in May, 1862, as a dealer in
groceries and produce and added the commission business a little
later, as I was fond of shooting, and I began advertising the sale
of game. I have been credited by dealers in New York with being the
largest shipper of venison in the United States. In 1864 (I think it
was) I had a shipment of live wild pigeons which we brought down the
Cheboygan River from Black Lake in crates holding six dozen each. All
of these crates were made by hand by one E. Osborn, who was then one
of the traveling pigeon catchers, the firm being Osborn & Thompson,
well known by all men who traveled then. From that time I have handled
live pigeons in quantities up to 175,000 per year until they left the
country. The last nesting in Michigan was up on Crooked Lake near
Petoskey in 1878, I believe, from which I shipped 150,000.
In 1866, they nested in the town of Vassar, Tiscola County, Mich., and
usually each alternate year, as the mast crop was every second season,
beech nuts being their choice food. The other years they nested in
Wisconsin on acorns, or in Minnesota, feeding on spring wheat. New York
sometimes held them, and Pennsylvania often, for a nesting; but being
a hard place they never caught many there, Michigan being the favorite
trapping ground. 1874 there was a nesting at Shelby, Oceana County,
Mich., on which it was estimated they made the heaviest catches I have
ever known of: 100 barrels daily on an average of thirty days of dead
birds, besides the live ones, of which I shipped 175,000.
There were five nestings that year in the State, three going on at
the same time, but all not heavily worked. That year I shipped by the
steamer _Fountain City_, from Frankfort, 478 coops, six dozen each,
one shipment going to Oswego, N. Y., for the Leather Stocking Club
Tournament.
I bought from Dr. Slyfield 600 dozen at $1 per dozen, agreeing to pay
only in one-hundred-dollar bills. He traveled two days to get twelve
dozen to make up the shortage. The pigeons at that time wintered in
southern Missouri and the Indian Nation, and were shot at night by
natives and marketed in St. Louis. As they fed on pine-oak acorns,
which tainted the meat, the market was poor and prices low. The
traveling netters usually worked at something else while South.
The pigeons started north about the last of March, and usually located
the last of May, according to weather. If food was plentiful they
nested in large bodies; if not, they divided and nested in fewer
numbers. In Wisconsin I have seen a continual nesting for 100 miles,
with from one to possibly fifty nests on every oak scrub.
In Michigan usually the feeding grounds were across the straits, where
blueberries were abundant, until fall, when the birds scattered back in
small bodies, feeding on stubble and elm seed. Frequently they would
go into a roosting place, and make it a home for weeks before leaving
for the South. Traveling north, they usually flew until about ten or
eleven in the morning and again in the evening. I have known of large
quantities being drowned in Lake Huron, crossing from Canada on the way
north, and have had lake captains tell me of passing for three hours
through dead birds, which had been caught in a fog.
In 1874 there were over six hundred professional netters, and when
the pigeons nested north, every man and woman was either a catcher
or a picker. They used to catch them in different ways. What was
known as flight-catching was in the early morning and evening, a spot
being cleared of usually twelve to sixteen feet wide and twenty to
twenty-four feet long, large enough for a net. This was known as the
bed. About fifty feet from the bed a brush house was built and the
net was staked down, two spring poles were set to spring the net out
straight, but loose enough to fall easy and cover the full size of the
bed. The front line of the net was tied to these stakes and they were
sprung or set back as if all of the net was in a roll. A short stake
with a line attached to the outside edge ran to the bough house, a
stick about three feet long was placed under a catch called the hub,
and the other end of this stick was placed against another peg driven
in the ground. When the short stick was pulled from underneath the
crotch, the spring poles forced the net over the bed; the short sticks
raised the net about three feet; and of course it was all done very
quickly.
Another method was employed later in the season; a place was baited
with buckwheat, sometimes with broomcorn seed, or wheat, for a week or
two, and, when a large body of birds was collected, the net was set.
A much larger net is used now. Then is when we got our live birds for
shooting matches. In the spring time is money, and the netters could
save many more dead than alive.
I knew of a man paying $300 for the privilege of netting on one salt
spring near White River. It was a spring dug for oil, boarded up
sixteen feet square. He cut it down a little and built a platform, and
caught once or twice each week. He got 300 dozen at one haul in this
house. He said they were piled there three feet deep.
I once pulled a net on a bait bed and we saved 132 dozen alive, but
many got out from underneath the net, there being too many on the bed.
The net used was 28 × 36 feet. I have lost 3,000 birds in one day
because the railroad did not have a car ready on the date promised. I
threw away what cost me $250 in eight hours, fat birds, because the
weather was too hot. I have bought carloads in Wisconsin at 15 and 25
cents per dozen, but in Michigan we usually paid from 50 cents to $1
a dozen. I have fed thirty bushels of shelled corn daily at $1.20 per
bushel, and paid out from $300 to $600 per day for pigeons.
I never allowed game to be shipped to me out of season; if it came, I
never paid for it.
About two years ago I was told by a man who just got back from the
Northwest, Calgary, that the birds were so thick in the north that
they darkened the sun. They were probably nesting, as he said they
were seen every morning.... Up to ten years ago I was shooting on the
Mississippi bayous for twenty-five years, and used to see and kill some
pigeons nearly every spring, from the middle of March to the middle of
April. We have shot seventy-two pounds of powder in my camp in thirty
days, the party consisting of three men; and two of us have killed
twelve barrels of ducks (Mallards) in four days. On the Detroit River
I have shot, in one week, mostly redheads, the following on different
days: 102, 119, 142, 155....
[I have quoted from the latter part of Mr. Phillips' letter to show how
plentiful other kinds of birds were in the old days.]
Under date of Nov. 1, 1904, Mr. Phillips writes as follows:
"In regard to dates, would say that the last nesting of birds set in
at about 5 P.M., May 5, 1878, on the southeast side of Crooked Lake.
Express charges on barrels to New York from Michigan were $6.50, from
Wisconsin $8; on live birds $3 per cwt."
Mr. Phillips also incloses a letter written to him by Mr. Osborn, of
Alma, Mich., under date of February 23, 1898, which reads:
Alma, Mich., February 23, 1898.
Friend H. T. Phillips:
Yours with the questions to be answered received, and will say:
... There have been several bodies nesting in Michigan at the same
time, and I will give the years and places that I was out. In 1861 a
large body of birds were in Ohio roosting in the Hocking Hills, my
first year out. We were at Circleville, and my company shipped over
225 barrels, mostly to New York and Boston. The birds fed on the corn
fields. In 1862 the birds nested at Monroe, Wis. We commenced in May
and remained until the last of August. The several companies put up
some ten thousand dozen for stall feeding after the freight shipment.
Express charges on each barrel were from $7 to $9. In the fall of 1862
we had fine sport shooting birds in the roost at Johnstown, Ohio (now
Ada), some four weeks. Then the birds moved to Logan County. After two
weeks the birds skipped South, it being December and snow on the ground.
In 1863 the birds nested in Pennsylvania. We had some fine sport at
Smith Port and at Sheffield. We located at Cherry Grove, six miles from
Sheffield. The birds fed on hemlock mast. There were other nestings
in Pennsylvania at the same time. In 1864, at St. Charles, Minn., we
had some fine sport, but our freights were high to New York, so we
came to Leon, Wis. A heavy body was nesting in the Kickapoo woods, and
several companies of hunters located here. In 1865 a heavy nesting was
in Canada, near Georgian Bay. We were at Angus Station on the Northern
Railroad, and the snow was two feet under the nesting. We next went
to Wisconsin, where a heavy snowstorm broke up the roosts. We were at
Afton, Brandon and Appleton. We then went to Rochester, Minn., the end
of the railroad. At that time birds nested in the Chatfield timber. We
then went to Marquette in the Upper Peninsula and camped on Dead River.
A heavy body had got through nesting, but worlds of birds were feeding
on blueberries.
This was the year the _Pewabic_ sunk. Mr. George Snook had 1,400
barrels of trout and whitefish on her. We went up on the _Old Traveler_
and came down on the _Meteor_. In 1866 the birds nested in a heavy body
near Martinsville, Ind. We caught some birds at Cartersburg. After we
closed up in Indiana we went to Pennsylvania. There was a heavy nesting
near Wilcox, at Highlands. In gathering squabs five of us got a barrel
apiece, which netted us $75 to $100 per barrel in New York. They struck
a bare market.
In July we had a big time with young birds at Fort Gratiot, near Port
Huron, from the Forestville nesting. Mr. H. T. Phillips of Detroit was
chief of a party which had fine shooting on a Mr. Palmer's place. In
six days I shipped thirteen barrels to Tremain & Summer, New York, and
received a check for over $400. They returned me about one-half what
they sold for.
In 1867 we were in Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and caught more or
less birds on bait. The birds were broken up by shooting and deep
snow. In 1868 there was a large nesting near Manistee, and we did
some big catching, shipped by steamer to Grand Haven, then via rail.
In April and May was also at Mackinac and North Port and in June did
some catching at Cheboygan, and here I made our crates of split cedar
and floated the birds down the river six miles on two canoes lashed
together, and had to transfer over the dam before reaching the little
steamer to Mackinac, twelve miles, and then transferred to the Detroit
boat. The birds were shipped to H. T. Phillips & Co. At Cheboygan I fed
over one hundred bushels of corn and wheat for bait.
In 1869 the birds were in Canada, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin,
all at the same time, and shooters broke them up. We located a body
at Oakfield, Wis., and had a big catch until the farmers broke them
up. The birds were pulling wheat badly; other feed was gone. The birds
nested in Michigan, up from Mt. Pleasant, but too far inland to get
them out. In 1870 the birds nested near Goderich, Can. Did not do much
there. We then went to Glen Haven and caught some birds. Then we went
to Cheboygan; sent more or less live birds to H. T. Phillips & Co.,
of Detroit. In 1871 we located a large body at Tomah, Wis., and did
some heavy shipping. We used three tiers of ice from a large icehouse,
and the express per barrel was $12 to New York and Boston. We also
shipped from Augusta, Wis., express, $13.50 per barrel. A nesting at
Eau Claire, but we could not get to do much with them there. In 1872 a
large nesting near South Haven, Mich. We located at Bangor and had a
big catch in some big snowstorms. Another body near Clam Lake, end of
railroad. In 1873 we did baiting in Ohio and Wisconsin, but located no
nesting. In 1874 the birds nested at Shelby in two different locations
and another at Stanton, Mich.; small body at Stanton. We did heavy
shipping at Shelby, from one to three cars per day, both alive and
dead. The birds nested this year at Shelby, two places, and at Stanton,
and one at Mill Brook and at Frankfort and at Leeland, and probably at
other points we did not learn of. In 1875 was not out, only baiting
near St. Johns, Mich. In 1876 a heavy nesting at Shelby, Mich., and
at Frankfort. I caught at Shelby and at Glen Haven heavy shipments.
In 1877 was not out, but did some baiting at Eureka. In 1878 a heavy
nesting between Petoskey and Cheboygan. H. T. Phillips located at
Cheboygan. I caught at several points between the two cities.
The above is part of my experience with the birds, since which time
I have kept no record of the movements, but will say that during the
winter season birds have nested in large numbers in the southern
States; in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri. For a great many
years the birds have been moving west. Last winter I was in Southern
California, and a body of pigeons were west of Los Angeles, among the
acorn timber. There are worlds of feed in the foothills, for thousands
of miles, to feed the birds. They are a greedy bird and will eat
everything from a hemlock seed to an acorn. I have known them to nest
on hemlock mast alone in Pennsylvania, and in Michigan on the pine mast
after the beech mast was gone. Most of the nesting in Michigan happens
March to July, and then they skip farther north and return in wheat
seeding.
Alma, Mich., February 24, 1898.
Friend H. T. Phillips:
I will give you a few catches. In 1862, at Monroe, Wis., George Paxon,
of Evans Center, N. Y., and myself made one haul of 250 dozen five
miles south of the city on corn bait in a pen 32 × 64 feet with nets
sprung across the top. We fed at this bed over five hundred bushels
of corn at 25 cents per bushel, and at our other beds nearly as much.
After the flight-birds were over, with a single net sprung on the
ground we have taken 100 dozen at a time.
At Augusta, Wis., in 1871, Charles Curtin, then of Indiana (dead now),
over one hundred dozen; William W. Cone of Masonville, N. Y., Samuel
Schook of Circleville, Ohio, and some other boys, 100 dozen and over.
L. G. Parker of Camden, N. Y., C. S. Martin, the Rocky Mountain hunter
of Wisconsin, E. G. Slayton of Chetek, Wis., are old trappers and could
tell of big catches. In 1868, at Cheboygan, I took over six hundred
fat birds before sunrise. I sold to the United States officers at
Mackinac for trap shooting, also to Island House. In 1861 there were
only a few professionals: Dr. E. Osborn of Saratoga, N. Y; William N.
Cone, Masonville, N. Y; John Ackerman, Columbus, Ohio; L. G. Parke,
Camden, N. J.; James Thompson, Hookset, N. H.; S. K. Jones, Saratoga,
N. Y.; George and Charles Paxon of Evans Center, N. Y., and maybe a few
others. After this time, trappers increased fast. More salt was used in
Michigan for bait than any other State. I paid at Shelby $4 per barrel.
Big bodies of pigeons were drowned off Sleeping Bear Point because of
fog and wind, while trying to cross Lake Michigan. I have seen them.
In the Logan County roost, Ohio, I killed with two barrels, of a
six-bore shoulder gun, 144 birds. The other boys killed nearly as many
with smaller guns; we shot on the roost in the dark. Our plan was to
fire one barrel on the roost and the other as the pigeons flew. The
highest price paid per dozen was in New York City--$3--by Trimm &
Summer from Pennsylvania.
For a good many years the birds were in the eastern States, with heavy
catching in Massachusetts and New York, also Pennsylvania, and the
hunters worked into Canada, then into Ohio, and so on to Michigan and
Indiana, long before they took in Wisconsin and Minnesota, after they
left the eastern country for the west. A big body was at Grand Rapids
in 1858 or 1859, before I joined the band.
The trappers at Grand Rapids were Dr. Osborn, Cone, Ackerman, the
two Paxons, Latimer, and a few others, who did some heavy shipping,
catching the birds on the salt marshes. I have no earlier records for
Michigan.
I kept no record of the amounts shipped from different points. The old
books of the express will show if they have kept them. I wait to see
your report, and remain,
Yours truly,
E. Osborn.
Detroit, Mich., November 2, 1904.
W. B. Mershon:
Dear Sir:--Last evening I looked over some old papers and found a
few memoranda that lead to my making some changes in my notes to you
in regard to the date of last nestings in our State. I also find my
later surmise confirmed by a letter from one of the first traveling
pigeon-catchers in the business, Ephraim Osborn, whose uncle, Dr.
Osborn of Saratoga, N. Y., was one of the original catchers. You will
note by Mr. Osborn's letter that he has been a shipper of mine for
a long time. I am well acquainted with him and knew all the men he
mentioned (with many others) at the Shelby nesting. There were nearly
six hundred names in the register book of pigeoners in Wisconsin.
Nearly every one of the farmers, and their wives and daughters, were
pigeon catchers.
In regard to the dates of last nesting: 1878 was the last year that
the catch amounted to enough to keep men in the business. I find I was
at Cheboygan part of the time, and got only a small number of birds in
1880, but some few nested (small body) that year.
Yours truly,
H. T. Phillips.
CHAPTER XI
Recollections of "Old Timers"
Mr. Oscar B. Warren, now of Houghton, Mich., has been interested for
years in collecting data about the Passenger Pigeon, and kindly turned
over to me his entire budget. Among his letters is the following from
Mr. H. T. Blodgett, Superintendent of Public Schools, Ludington, Mich.,
dated November 19, 1904:
... Your pigeon is a stranger to me, or rather has been a stranger for
six or more years. I can distinctly remember clouds of them, darkening
the sky, almost, in Pennsylvania, thirty years ago. Later, in Michigan,
they were abundant, coming to this part of the State as soon as the
snow was gone, picking up the beech nuts and "shack" of the woods.
After a few weeks' flying about and feeding they would disappear;
reappearing again in June, young pigeons, fat, and the choicest eating.
They would stay a few weeks, not more than about three weeks, going
about July 1. During this visit the birds haunted the thick woods, and
would call from the shade of the leaves of beech, maple, and hemlock
trees through the heat of the day, feeding mornings and evenings on
the sprouted beech nuts under the leaves.
There would often be a third appearance in September, when I have seen
buckwheat fields blue with them. Also fall-sowed wheat fields would be
so covered with them that the farmer had to watch his fields to save
the seed he had sowed.
During the spring and also the fall visit, flocks searching for feeding
ground could be called down from flight and induced to light on trees
near where the call was sounded. The call was one in imitation of the
pigeon's own call, given either as a peculiar throat sound (liable to
make the throat sore if too often repeated) or with a silk band between
two blocks of wood, like this
[Illustration: The pigeon call]
held between the lips and teeth and blown like a blade of grass between
the thumbs. By biting or pressing with the teeth at (A) (A) the tension
upon the silk band would be increased, raising the tone of the call or
relaxing for a lower note. Cleverly used, it was very successful in
calling pigeons feeding in small flocks to alight.
Much to my regret I have seen none of the beautiful birds for about
six years. The savage warfare upon them, from nesting place to nesting
place by pot-hunters and villainous fellows who barreled them for
market, with nets and every brutal means for wholesale destruction, has
driven them, I know not whither. If there are considerable flocks of
them anywhere, I should be glad to know it.
I wish I might help you. Such things as are here hastily recalled and
written will not be likely to afford anything of interest, but if there
is any thought or anything in it, it is cheerfully given.
On the great sand bluffs which line our shores in many places, flocks
of pigeons in passing would fly so low that a man with a club could
knock them down. At Lincoln, three miles north of here, nets were put
on the top of the hills, like gill nets, to catch them in their flight.
They were never very successful.
[Illustration: Showing the method of placing pigeon net]
(_Notes by the Allen Brothers, Joseph and Isaac, of Manchester, Mich.
A copy of their letter was received through kindness of L. Whitney
Watkins, of Manchester, Mich._)
We have had about fifty years' experience in the business [pigeon
catching], as we used to help our father as long ago as we can
recollect, he being one of the best pigeoners in his day, working a
great deal at the business in the summer season. Until we were twenty
years old we lived on the shores of Lake Ontario in Wayne County, N. Y.
The pigeons used to have a flying course along the shore of the lake on
their way to the Montezuma marshes after salt. Pigeons are very fond of
salt, or, rather, brine. It seems to be a necessary article for them.
Their course was generally from west to east. They seldom flew west by
the same route. How far they came, we could not tell; perhaps from this
State or perhaps farther west. Sometimes they would go west by the same
route. If so, they were much easier to catch than when going east. When
going east they were looking for salt; when west, for food.
They used to commence to fly about the 1st of April and keep it up
until the middle of June. After that time they would scatter over the
country, and did not fly in large flocks as in the spring.
It would be hard to make any estimate of their numbers that people
would believe at this late day. I was going to say that a thousand
million could have been seen in the air all at once. There would
be days and days when the air was alive with them, hardly a break
occurring in a flock for half a day at a time. Flocks stretched as far
as a person could see, one tier above another. I think it would be safe
to say that millions could have been seen at the same time.
In the year 1854 we moved to Michigan, settling near Adrian, where we
found pigeons quite plentiful. When they were flying here (Adrian) they
seemed to scatter over the State, having no regular course.
The supply of pigeons kept very regular here for about twenty-five or
thirty years. About the time we came west the pigeons became scarce in
New York, and very few have been seen there since. It is five years
(1890) since we have seen or heard of any being seen in this State
(Michigan) or in any other.
Our "pigeoning" was more for sport than profit, and we liked a nice
broiled pigeon for breakfast about as well as anything we could have,
especially when they were worth $6.00 per dozen. If the pigeons had
been sent to the New York market they could have been sold for big
prices, as pigeons sold for larger and better prices than any other
game in that market. Our father did not like the idea of sending
pigeons to New York for a market.
After we came to where we now live (Cambridge), and when I was going
to Adrian, I stopped at father's on my road. He had been out catching
pigeons that morning and had secured 600 by 10 o'clock. He said to me:
"I wish you would take these pigeons to Adrian and sell them if you
can. Take them to the depot and sell them for 10 cents per dozen. If
you cannot sell them, give them to the workingmen in the shops."
I thought 10 cents was pretty cheap, so I went to selling at 20 cents
per dozen. When the men came out of the work-shops I sold them all at
25 cents per dozen. After I left for town, father caught 500 more, and
took them to Adrian the same day and sold them for 10 cents per dozen.
If the same lot of pigeons had been shipped to New York, they would
probably have brought $2 or more per dozen.
About a year from that time we caught 600 in one day, and made up our
minds we would ship them to New York. We took them to Adrian to ship.
When we got to Adrian we saw father, who, after inquiring about our
intentions concerning their shipment, said:
"It is foolish for you to send them, as they will never be heard from."
He advised us to dispose of them for 25 cents per dozen; this was the
highest price pigeons were worth in Adrian. To please him we tried
to sell them for that price, but could not, so, taking them to the
express office, we shipped them. In about four days the returns came,
netting us 70 cents per dozen, about the lowest price we ever got. They
explained that the pigeons had been poorly handled or they would have
brought more. This was thirty-five years ago, _and these were probably
the first pigeons shipped from this State to New York_.
We have shipped thousands since. They would probably average $2 per
dozen. We have sold them as high as $3.75 per dozen and have seen them
quoted as high as $6 per dozen. A pigeoner from Pennsylvania told us
he shipped two barrels at one time and got $5.50 per dozen. We caught
2,400 one week, having them all on hand at one time. We got a market
report from New York where they were quoted at $6.50 per dozen. We
packed and shipped ours as soon as possible. When they reached market
they sold for $1.50 per dozen. The army of pigeoners had struck a big
nesting in the State of Wisconsin the same week we caught ours, and
they shipped them to market by the wholesale. The market dropped from
$6.50 to $1.25 in one week.
The pigeon business was very profitable for men who were used to it,
and there were probably from one to three hundred men in the trade.
When the pigeons changed their location, the pigeoners would follow
them, sometimes going over a thousand miles.
When this army of men had good luck they would ship them by the
hundreds of barrels. Probably as many as five hundred barrels have
been shipped to New York and Boston in one day. Our commission man in
New York wrote us that 100 barrels a day could be sold there without
affecting the market but very little.
I was at a pigeon nesting in the State of Pennsylvania where there were
from three to five hundred men catching pigeons and squabs. It was a
great sight to see the birds going back and forth after food. When
nesting in such large bodies, they leave the food in the near vicinity
for their young. If they can find plenty of food, they nest in large
bodies; if not, they scatter over the country and nest in scattered
colonies.
The nesting I mentioned in Pennsylvania was within one mile of the
cleared lands. We camped within two miles of the nesting. The pigeons
kept up a continual roaring by their combined twittering and cooing, so
that it could be heard for miles away by night as well as day.
Sometimes it is almost impossible to catch the pigeons. At the nesting
mentioned the most experienced hands found it impossible to take large
numbers. The whole crowd of men could not catch more than one man ought
to have caught under the circumstances.
The young pigeons (squabs) were much sought after in New York and
Boston, and if sent in moderate numbers brought big prices, usually
about two dollars per dozen. When the squabs were old enough to
market, the army of pigeoners (estimated to be about five hundred)
commenced taking them. Entering the woods in which the nesting was
located, they cut down the trees right and left, cutting the timber
over thousands of acres. When a tree fell, bringing with it the squabs,
they picked the young birds up, sometimes getting as many as two dozen
from one tree. The large trees, which might have yielded fifty or a
hundred, were left standing. Our company of five took in two days
thirteen barrels of squabs, averaging 400 to the barrel.
There were shipped from two stations on the Erie road in one day 200
barrels of these young pigeons. If they had been old birds, they would
not have broken the market, but this was too many squabs, and the price
dropped 25 to 45 cents per dozen.
Osborn told me that he once caught 3,500 at one catch. It was at a big
nesting in the State of Wisconsin. He had an enormous flock baited.
He said that he put out as high as forty bushels of shelled corn at
one time on the bed where he caught this large number. For a trap, he
had constructed a board pen built up from the ground four or five feet
high. This pen was about one hundred feet long by twenty feet wide. He
took three large-sized nets, and, tying them together, set them on this
pen. He had feeding pens built by the side of the trap-pen, so when
he made a catch he could drive the pigeons into the feeding pens and
fatten them for market, these "stall-fed" birds bringing much higher
prices than poor birds. This large catch filled all his feeding pens.
He said he could have made another catch fully as large as the one just
mentioned, in one-half hour afterward but, having no room, he could not
take care of any more.
This method of catching pigeons was much the best when they were to be
preserved alive. It was rather a late invention in the pigeon-netting
business. We have caught with one net in the same way as many as four
hundred at one time. With a net set on the ground we have taken from
three to five hundred a great many times. In this latter manner, a
brother of mine caught 556 with one net. Without help, in one day I
have caught from thirteen to fourteen hundred out of a flock as they
were flying over.
We have two ways of pigeoning. One is catching out of flocks as they
are flying over; the other is catching baited pigeons. One way of
bringing the flocks out of the air was by using live pigeons kept for
that purpose. These we called "fliers" and "stool-pigeons;" generally
from three to five fliers and two stool-pigeons. For the "fliers" and
"stools" we made what we called "boots" of soft leather. These were
slipped on the leg a little above the foot. To the boots of the fliers
were fastened small stout cords from two to four rods long, on the
other end of which was fastened a small bush. If the birds were flying
high, we used a longer string.
The stool-pigeons were fastened to stools and set on the "bed"; when
the net was sprung the birds were under it. The bed over which the net
was sprung was the same size as the net, or from thirty to forty feet
long by twelve to fifteen feet wide. It was made by clearing the ground
of all rubbish, and making it as clean as a garden. Before the net was
set it covered the bed. We tied a rope to each of the front corners. On
the front side we used two spring stakes fastened in the ground at the
ends of the ropes, which were tied to the stake about five feet from
the ground. At one of the stakes we built a bough house so that the
rope from the net would pass through the house. The back corners were
fastened with small, notched stakes which were driven in the ground so
that the notches faced the bough house. We used what we called "flying
staffs"--small stakes about four feet long and the thickness of a broom
handle, with a notch cut in one end. We also used two more small stakes
to set the flying staffs against, to hold the net when set. It took two
to properly set a net. Each one took a staff, stepped in front, one
at each corner, caught hold of the rope, and crowded the front edge
back of the back edge about six inches. Then the flying staffs were
placed against the small stakes, notch end against the ropes. The net
was now crowded to the ground and the staffs slipped into the notches
of the stakes to hold the net in place. The slack of the net was laid
alongside the rope on the ground. By crowding the net back, it sprung
the stakes over, which sprung the net. The stool-pigeons were made
to hover by pulling a line reaching into the bough house, where the
pigeoner awaited them with his fliers.
When a flock of pigeons came near enough to spy the fliers, the
pigeoner threw the tethered birds into the air. They quickly flew the
length of the line and then hovered near the ground. They had the
appearance of feeding on the bed, which, of course, has been supplied
with food. The wild flock alighted and began feeding. The net rope
passing through the bough house was pulled by the pigeoner, and this
drew the flying staffs from under the hooks, the staffs raised the
front edge of the net up about four feet, and over it went as quick as
a flash, covering or catching perhaps five hundred at once.
[Illustration: BAND-TAILED PIGEON (_Columba fasciata_)
Often mistaken for Passenger Pigeon]
Letter from James B. Purdy, of Plymouth, Mich.:
November, 1894.
Oscar B. Warren,
Palmer, Mich.
Dear Sir:--Yours of November 24 received, asking me to send notes
on the Passenger Pigeon. In the beginning I would say that I am now
fifty-one years of age, and I am writing this under the roof of the old
homestead where I was born, hence my memory of the passenger pigeon
for this locality extends back to my early boyhood, when millions of
pigeons visited this locality on their spring and fall migrations, and
during their spring migrations comparatively few halted with us to
feed, but the great majority of them winged their way in a high-flying
flock of unbroken columns, sometimes half a mile in length, to the
north and west, probably to their breeding grounds; but on their
return, from the first to the fifteenth of September, they would swarm
down on our newly sowed wheat fields until acres of ground would be
blue, and when they arose they would darken the air and their wings
would sound like distant thunder. They were not so shy at this time
of the year, as part of them were young birds, which were easily
distinguished from the old ones by their speckled breasts; and I would
here state that, during both spring and fall migrations, their greatest
flight seemed to be from sunrise until about nine or ten o'clock A.M.
My father was an old pigeon catcher, and it was during these fall
migrations that he would go out in the middle of a wheat field, build
his bough house, set his net, and prepare for the finest sport in which
it was ever my good fortune to participate; and many a time have I been
with him when he has caught hundreds of them in a single morning. You
may ask, What did you do with so many pigeons? Well, I will tell you.
We skinned out the breasts, pickled them for two or three days in weak
brine, and then strung them on strings, from one hundred and fifty to
two hundred on a string, and hung them up to dry in the same manner
as dried beef (I mean the breasts). Of course the remainder of the
carcasses we cooked for immediate use, or as much of them as we needed
for the family. Let me tell you that those pigeon breasts were a dainty
morsel, and would last as long as dried beef and was far its superior
in taste.
While rummaging through the attic a few days since, I came across
the old pigeon stool upon which the stool-pigeon was tied, which my
father used so many years ago, and it carried me back to my boyhood and
conveyed to my mind vivid memories of the past.
The pigeons continued to visit us in great abundance for a number of
years, although there would be an occasional season when there would
not be so many. As the years rolled by they became fewer in number
until in the fall of 1876, when I saw my last Passenger Pigeons (a
small flock of ten or fifteen), I tried hard to procure some for my
cabinet, but failed.
One peculiar habit of the Passenger Pigeons was that during their
migrations, should they alight and their crops were filled with
inferior food, they would vomit it up in order to fill themselves with
something better should they find it.
* * * * *
F. N. Lawrence stated in _Forest and Stream_ of February 18, 1899,
that when a boy, in the late forties, he spent most of his time on
his grandfather's country seat at Manhattanville, on the North River.
In those years the wild pigeon flew south on both sides of the North
River by the thousands in the fall, and in lesser numbers flew north in
the spring.
He also wrote: "These migrations occurred with the utmost regularity.
The first easterly storm after September 1st, clearing up with a strong
northwest wind, was as surely followed by a flight of wild pigeons as
the sun was to rise. During such storms, I have passed many a sleepless
night watching to catch the first change of wind, and when it veered
northwest, daybreak found me on the river bank watching for the flight
that never failed. Ah! how my heart jumped as flock after flock of wild
pigeons came flying over Fort Washington like small clouds. I have
shot a great many of them, but alas, like the buffalo, they are almost
exterminated."
* * * * *
I have run across what was evidently my first diary, dated 1872, when I
was fourteen years old. I make the following extracts from it:
April 6th. "Pigeon flew this morning."
Then on April 8th I mention 9 pigeons shot in the afternoon by my
father, and say "they flew very thick in the morning."
The record, like most boys' diaries, seems to have many skips, for the
next item about pigeons is on the 11th of May, saying that I shot 2
that day and on the 1st of June I mention that I killed 3 pigeons in
the morning, "the most I ever have shot at one time."
My marksmanship seems to have improved after that, for on the 7th
of June I mention shooting 7, and on the 8th 8 (I used to go every
morning), and on the 10th I got 8 again and on the 11th 12, and so on
with varying success. On June 11 I mention that the young ones were
beginning to fly plentifully.
W. B. M.
Extract from a letter written by the late Alexander McDougall of
Duluth, February 8, 1905:
I have been about Lake Superior since 1863. Have never known any
rookery near the lake or in Lake Superior Basin, although I think they
did breed near Lake Superior, for they were in such great quantities
about the lake during the whole summer. In 1871 when this town (Duluth)
was first building, there were millions of them about here. In the Lake
Superior region there are lots of berries but no beech nuts, except
near Grand Island, 40 miles east of Marquette. It is likely if there
was any roosting on Lake Superior, this would be the most favorable
place.... The pigeon was numerous on Lake Superior in 1872, for I have
recollections of catching some that year while captain of the Steamer
_Japan_. During foggy weather and at night, they would alight on the
boat in great numbers, tired out. On foggy mornings, the blowing of
our whistle would start them up. Often, when they would light on the
eave of our overhanging deck, we could sneak along under the deck and
quickly snatch one. I remember having caught several in that way. As
clearly as I can remember, they left all at once along about 1875.
I have seen a few here along about 1882, and one fall in October, I
think, of 1884, I saw two or three, the last I remember of them.
Kalamazoo, Mich., June 13th, 1905.
Wm. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.:
* * * * *
It seems too bad that this noble bird should have been blotted out. The
last flock, a small one, that I ever saw was in 1891. I saw pigeons in
1883, 1885 and 1886.
I have been in their nesting grounds. The males and the females sit on
the nest on alternate days. When their big nesting was near South Haven
in this State, the birds used to fly over this town every day in their
quest for food, some of them going fully seventy-five miles in an air
line from their nesting. One day it would be a continuous stream of
male birds and the next day it would be the females.
How the netters did massacre them and ship them away by thousands and
thousands. Many were kept alive and shipped all over the country for
pigeon shoots. The last wild pigeons ever used for this purpose that
I know of was at John Watson's Grand Grossing, Chicago, Illinois, in
1886. I asked Watson, in February last, where he got those birds, and
he said from Indian Territory, so I think the netters finally cleaned
up what was left of the big flight that perished from the sleet and fog
at their last nesting in Michigan, near Petoskey, in 1881.
Their nests were built and eggs laid in late April. A big wind and
storm of sleet came up just at dusk and the birds left; there was a big
fog on Lake Michigan, and the birds were swallowed up by the storm;
anyhow they disappeared then and there. I have heard tell of the beach
being strewn for miles with dead pigeons, and I heard an old woodsman
tell of the stench arising from dead pigeons in the woods.
It was that storm of ice that surely wiped them out.
I was at Petoskey in 1882, and no pigeons showed up that year.
What a host of memories of boyhood days are recalled, when one thinks
of the wild pigeons. I can see myself a boy again, equipped with a
long, single barrel shot gun, shot pouch and powder flask a-dangling, a
box of G. D. caps in my pocket, and I a-sneakin' and a-sneakin' up for
a shot at an old cock pigeon perched away up on a dead limb at the top
of a tall tree. How handsome is that old cock with neck outstretched
and tail a-streamin', the richness of his coloring, the red of the
breast, the metallic sheen of that outstretched neck is of marvelous
luster as bathed in the glories of the morning sunlight. He turns
his head! He is onto that boy who is sneaking so carefully along the
old rail fence. Carefully the gun is raised and aimed; the trigger
is pressed. "Ker-whang" in a cloud of smoke is the loud report. The
old cock, startled, flies away. "Missed him, by gosh!" is the boy's
lament as he starts to reload, whilst in unison with the rattle of the
grains of powder in the flask, there comes drifting down on the morning
breeze, slowly wafting here and there, a long tail feather from that
noble bird to show that though missed, yet the aim was true.
Yours truly,
Ben O. Bush.
Kalamazoo, Mich., June 17th, 1905.
Dear Mershon:
Do not understand me as to my assertion, that in nesting time the wild
pigeons in feeding, the males always alternate with the females, each
having a day off and a day on throughout the period of incubation and
the rearing of the young. It depended upon the amount of food and the
distance that they had to go to get it, and they changed their habit
according to the conditions. If they had to make a long flight, as was
the case when they passed over here, then they alternated; but I will
agree with you that their habit in nesting time when food was plenty
and not far away, was for the males to sit first in the morning, then
the females, and sometimes the males a second time, all in the same
day. Pigeons require a great deal of water, and sometimes their crops
would show that they had been to water prior to their return flight,
while at other times the food in their crops would be dry.
Some other boys and I had a lot of wild birds that we bought alive
from a netter. We put the birds in the loft of a big barn where there
was a lot of beans that had not been threshed. We would put in a big
trough of water for them every day. The way those birds threshed out
those bean pods was a caution. They became very fat and fairly tame.
What wouldn't I give to hear the call note of Tete! Tete! Tete! of the
pigeons once more.
Yours truly,
Ben O. Bush.
* * * * *
J. S. Van Cleef of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., wrote in _Forest and Stream_ of
May 20, 1899, as follows:
For many years up to about 1850, flocks of wild pigeons in the fall
were quite abundant, and were very often taken with nets, which was
a very favorite way of capturing them at that time, but very few, if
any, have been taken in this manner since that time. A few small flocks
appeared in the fifties, but not to such an extent that an attempt was
made to capture them through the aid of pigeon nets, and I find upon
inquiry that the experience of others agrees with my own.
The last flight of pigeons of which I have any knowledge occurred in
the seventies, where they nested in the mountain range south of the
Beaverkill in the lower part of Ulster County. There were two flights
about this time, one small one, and in the course of two or three years
this was followed by a flight where the pigeons appeared in great
numbers.
This flock had nested in Missouri in the month of April, and the
most of the squabs were killed by those who were in the business of
furnishing squabs for the market.
When the nesting was over the entire flock went to Michigan, where they
nested again, and they were followed there by the same persons who
again destroyed most of the squabs. When they left Michigan they took
their flight eastward, and telegrams were sent all over that part of
the country where the pigeons would be likely to nest a third time, and
as soon as they settled in the Catskills these persons were apprised of
the location and very soon appeared on the scene.
The party, about thirty strong, stopped at Monson's, whose house was
located on the upper Beaverkill, about three miles from the nest.
This nest was a mile from the Willewemoc Lodge, where I happened to
be during the whole time that the pigeons were in their roost. It was
claimed at the time that the squabs were sent down to New York by the
ton, but as to this I have no personal knowledge, though I do know that
during the nesting all, or nearly all, of the squabs were destroyed,
and this was done by invading the grounds at night and striking the
trunks of the trees with a heavy axe or sledge hammer, upon which the
squabs would tumble out of the nests on the ground, and be picked up
and carried to Monson's and shipped to New York the next day.
I do know, however, that from a natural ice house and the ice house
belonging to our club, these persons obtained not less than fifteen
tons of ice for the purpose of preserving the squabs.
This is the last flight of pigeons that has ever taken place in this
part of the country, so far as I have any knowledge, and I am very sure
that if there had been any I would have known it.
Poughkeepsie, N. Y., May 12.
CHAPTER XII
The Last of the Pigeons
From "The Auk," July, 1897, under the title "Additional Records of the
Passenger Pigeon (_Ectopistes migratorius_.)"
Most of the notes on the Passenger Pigeon recorded in the past year
have referred to single birds or pairs. It is with much pleasure that
I now call attention to a flock of some fifty, observed in southern
Missouri. I am not only greatly indebted to Mr. Chas. H. Holden, Jr.,
for this interesting information, but for the present of a beautiful
pair which he sent me in the flesh, he having shot them as they flew
rapidly overhead. Mr. Holden was, at the time (December 17, 1896),
hunting quail in Attie, Oregon County, Mo. The residents of this hamlet
had not seen any pigeons there before in some years.
Simon Pokagon, Chief of the remaining Pottawattamie tribe, and probably
the best posted man on the wild pigeon in Michigan, writes me under
date of October 16, 1896: "I am creditably informed that there was a
small nesting of pigeons last spring not far from the headwaters of
the Au Sable River in Michigan." Mr. Chase S. Osborn, State Game and
Fish Warden of Michigan, under date, Sault Ste. Marie, March 2, 1897,
writes: "Passenger Pigeons are now very rare indeed in Michigan, but
some have been seen in the eastern parts of Chippewa County, in the
upper peninsula, every year. As many as a dozen or more were seen in
this section in one flock last year, and I have reason to believe that
they breed here in a small way. One came into this city last summer
and attracted a great deal of attention by flying and circling through
the air with the tame pigeons. I have a bill in the Legislature of
Michigan, closing the season for killing wild pigeons for ten years."
Ruthven Deane,
Chicago, Ill.
From "The Auk," April, 1898, Vol. 15, Page 184, under the title, "The
Passenger Pigeon (_Ectopistes migratorius_) in Wisconsin and Nebraska."
Our records of this species during the past few years have referred
in most instances, to very small flocks and generally to pairs or
individuals. In _The Auk_ for July, 1897, I recorded a flock of some
fifty pigeons from southern Missouri, but such a number has been very
unusual. It is now very gratifying to be able to record still larger
numbers and I am indebted to Mr. A. Fugleberg of Oshkosh, Wis., for
the following letter of information, under date of September 1, 1897:
"I live on the west shore of Lake Winnebago, Wis. About 6 o'clock on
the morning of August 14, 1897, I saw a flock of wild pigeons flying
over the bay from Fisherman's Point to Stony Beach, and I assure you
it reminded me of old times, from 1855 to 1880, when pigeons were
plentiful every day. So I dropped my work and stood watching them.
This flock was followed by six more flocks, each containing about
thirty-five to eighty pigeons, except the last, which only contained
seven. All these flocks passed over within half an hour. One flock
of some fifty birds flew within gunshot of me, the others all the
way from one hundred to three hundred yards from where I stood." Mr.
Fugleberg is an old hunter and has had much experience with the wild
pigeon. In a later letter dated September 4, 1897, he writes: "On Sept.
2, 1897, I was hunting prairie chickens near Lake Butte des Morts,
Wis., where I met a friend who told me that a few days previous he had
seen a flock of some twenty-five wild pigeons and that they were the
first he had seen for years." This would appear as though these birds
were instinctively working back to their old haunts, as the Winnebago
region was once a favorite locality. We hope that Wisconsin will follow
Michigan in making a close season on wild pigeons for ten years,
and thus give them a chance to multiply, and, perhaps, regain, in a
measure, their former abundance.
In _Forest and Stream_ of Sept. 25, 1897, appeared a short notice of
"Wild Pigeons in Nebraska," by "W. F. R." Through the kindness of
the editor he placed me in correspondence with the observer, W. F.
Rightmire, to whom I am indebted for the following details given in
his letter of Nov. 5, 1897: "I was driving along the highway north of
Cook, Johnson County, Neb., on August 17, 1897. I came to the timber
skirting the head stream of the Nemaha River, a tract of some forty
acres of woodland lying along the course of the stream, upon both
banks of the same, and there feeding on the ground or perched upon the
trees were the Passenger Pigeons I wrote the note about. The flock
contained seventy-five to one hundred birds. I did not frighten them,
but as I drove along the road the feeding birds flew up and joined the
others, and as soon as I had passed by they returned to the ground and
continued feeding. While I revisited the same locality, I failed to
find the pigeons. I am a native of Tompkins County, N. Y., and have
often killed wild pigeons in their flights while a boy on the farm,
helped to net them, and have hunted them in Pennsylvania, so that I
readily knew the birds in question the moment I saw them." I will here
take occasion to state that in my record of the Missouri flock (_Auk_,
July, 1897, p. 316) the date on which they were seen (Dec. 17, 1896)
was, through error, omitted.
Ruthven Deane,
Chicago, Ill.
From "The Auk," January, 1896, under the title, "Additional Records
of the Passenger Pigeon (_Ectopistes migratorius_) in Wisconsin and
Illinois."
I am indebted to my friend, Mr. John L. Stockton, of Highland Park,
Ill., for information regarding the occurrence of this pigeon in
Wisconsin. While trout fishing on the Little Oconto River in the
Reservation of the Menominee Indians, Mr. Stockton saw, early in June,
1895, a flock of some ten pigeons for several consecutive days near his
camp. They were first seen while alighting near the bank of the river,
where they had evidently come to drink. I am very glad to say that they
were not molested.
Mr. John F. Ferry of Lake Forest, Ill., has kindly notified me of the
capture of a young female pigeon which was killed in that town on
August 7, 1895. The bird was brought to him by a boy who had shot it
with a rifle ball, and although in a mutilated condition he preserved
it for his collection.
I have recently received a letter from Dr. H. V. Ogden, Milwaukee,
Wis., informing me of the capture of a young female pigeon which
was shot by Dr. Ernest Copeland on the 1st of October, 1895. These
gentlemen were camping at the time in the northeast corner of Delta
County, Mich. (Northern Peninsula), in the large hardwood forest that
runs through that part of the State. They saw no other of the species.
Ruthven Deane,
Chicago, Ill.
From "The Auk," July, 1895, under the title, "Additional Records of
the Passenger Pigeon in Illinois and Indiana."
The occurrence of the wild pigeon (_Ectopistes migratorius_) in this
section of the country, and, in fact, throughout the West generally, is
becoming rarer every year, and such observations and data as come to
our notice should be of sufficient interest to record.
I have, in the past few months, made inquiry of a great many sportsmen
who are constantly in the field and in widely distributed localities,
regarding any observations on the wild pigeon, and but few of them have
seen a specimen in the past eight or ten years. N. W. Judy & Co., of
St. Louis, Mo., dealers in poultry, and the largest receivers of game
in that section, wrote as follows: "We have had no wild pigeons for two
seasons; the last we received were from Siloam Springs, Ark. We have
lost all track of them, and our netters are lying idle."
I have made frequent inquiry among the principal game dealers in
Chicago and cannot learn of a single specimen that has been received in
our markets in several years. I am indebted to the following gentlemen
for notes and observations regarding this species, which cover a period
of eight years. I have various other records of the occurrence of the
pigeon in Illinois and Indiana, but do not consider them sufficiently
authentic to record, as to the casual observer this species and the
Carolina dove are often confounded.
A fine male pigeon was killed by my brother, Mr. Chas. E. Deane, April
18, 1887, while shooting snipe on the meadows near English Lake, Ind.
The bird was alone and flew directly over him. I have the specimen now
in my collection.
In September, 1888, while teal shooting on Yellow River, Stark County,
Ind., I saw a pigeon fly up the river and alight a short distance off.
I secured the bird which proved to be a young female.
On Sept. 17, 1887, Mr. John F. Hazen and his daughter Grace, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, while boating on the Kankakee River near English
Lake, Ind., observed a small flock of pigeons feeding in a little oak
grove bordering the river. They reported the birds as quite tame and
succeeded in shooting eight specimens.
Mr. Frank M. Woodruff, Assistant Curator, Chicago Academy of Sciences,
informs me that on Dec. 10, 1890, he received four Passenger Pigeons
in the flesh, from Waukegan, Ill., at which locality they were said to
have been shot. Three of the birds were males and one was a female.
One pair he disposed of, the other two I have recently seen in his
collection. In the fall of 1891, Mr. Woodruff also shot a pair at Lake
Forest, Ill., which he mounted and placed in the collection of the Cook
County Normal School, Englewood, Ill.
In the spring of 1893, Mr. C. B. Brown, of Chicago, Ill., collected a
nest of the wild pigeon containing two eggs at English Lake, Ind., and
secured both parent birds. Mr. Brown describes the nest as being placed
on the horizontal branch of a burr oak about ten feet from the trunk
and from forty to fifty feet from the ground. He did not preserve the
birds, but the eggs are still in his collection. The locality where
this nest was found was a short distance from where the Hazens found
their birds six years before.
Mr. John F. Ferry informs me that three pigeons were seen near the Des
Plaines River in Lake County, Ill., in September, 1893. One of these
was shot by Mr. F. C. Farwell.
In an article which appeared in the Chicago _Tribune_ Nov. 25, 1894,
entitled "Last of His Race," Mr. E. B. Clark related his experience in
observing a fine male wild pigeon in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Ill., in
April, 1893. I quote from the article: "He was perched on the limb of
a soft maple and was facing the rising sun. I have never seen in any
cabinet a more perfect specimen. The tree upon which he was resting
was at the southeast corner of the park. There were no trees between
him and the lake to break from his breast the fullness of the glory of
the rising sun. The pigeon allowed me to approach within twenty yards
of his resting place and I watched him through a powerful glass that
permitted as minute an examination as if he were in my hand. I was more
than astonished to find here, close to the pavements of a great city,
the representative of a race which always loved the wild woods, and,
which I thought had passed away from Illinois forever."
Mr. R. W. Stafford of Chicago, Ill., who has shot hundreds of pigeons
in former years within the present city limits of Chicago, informs me
that in the latter part of September, 1894, while shooting at Marengo,
Ill., he saw a flock of six flying swiftly over and apparently alight
in a small grove some distance off.
The above records will show that while in this section of the country
large flocks of Passenger Pigeons are a thing of the past, yet they are
still occasionally observed in small detachments or single birds.
A. B. Covert of Ann Arbor, Mich., wrote under date of Oct. 27, 1894:
"Prior to the spring of 1881 the wild pigeon was everywhere a common
bird of passage throughout the southern part of Michigan and nested
commonly in the northern part. My home, in 1880, and for a few years
after, was at Cadillac, Mich., and there was at that time a nesting
place near Muskrat Lake in Missaukee County. Thousands of the birds
were killed there. In the spring of 1881 the birds failed to make
their appearance, and since then have been very rare. Nov. 23, 1892,
I secured one male and two young females; these were killed in Scio,
Washtenaw County, Oct. 9, 1893; one male near Ypsilanti, Mich., Sept.
27, 1894; one female killed at Honey Brook, Scio, Washtenaw County.
There is also a female bird in this city that was killed in Livingston
County in October, 1892."
In a bulletin of the Michigan Ornithological Club, Vol. II, No. 3-4,
July to December, 1898, Mr. A. B. Covert, the club's president, tells
of seeing a flock of about two hundred pigeons. On Oct. 1, 1898, in
Washtenaw County, Mich., he watched a large number of them all day.
Mr. Stewart E. White writes from Ann Arbor under date of Feb. 9, 1894:
"My notebooks are not here so I cannot give exact dates, but I can
remember distinctly every specimen I ever saw. I observed one flock of
about sixty in Kent County in the fall, the last of October or first
of November, 1890. At Mackinac Island at various times in September
of 1889 I saw parts of a large flock, of say two hundred. My field
experience in the western part of Michigan has been quite extensive and
thorough, but these two flocks are all I ever recorded."
F. M. Falconer of Hillsdale, Mich., on Dec. 3, 1904, writes to Mr.
Warren as follows: "During the last week of March, 1892, one of the
students here shot a nice male. There were two together, but only one
was secured. That summer I saw a small flock feeding in some thick
woods along the banks of a stream in which I was fishing, in Chautauqua
County, N. Y. There were eight or ten birds at least, and perhaps many
more, as they scattered along in spots."
Mr. T. E. Douglas of Grayling, Mich., reports that in the year 1900
he saw three Passenger Pigeons on the East Branch of Au Sable River,
Michigan, and about five years previous to that date a flock of ten
was seen around George's Lake, which is eight miles southwest of West
Branch, Michigan.
I also have a record of one pigeon taken by Mr. John H. Sage, in
Portland, Conn., in October, 1889.
In May, 1904, Hon. Chase S. Osborn wrote:
Dear Mr. Mershon: I haven't much information relating to the pigeons
in this section of the country. In fact, the pigeon was practically
gone from the north when I first visited the country in 1880. I
remember seeing a flock of about three hundred in Florence County,
Wis., which would probably be on a line fifty miles south of here,
in 1883. In 1884 I saw a flock in that same section, in the woods
northwest of Florence, of about fifty. In 1890 I six of these birds
near the mouth of the Little Munoskong River in this county. This
river empties into Munoskong Bay, about thirty miles southeast of
here. In 1897 I saw a single wild pigeon, flying with the tame
pigeons around this town. It was a remarkable sight and attracted the
attention of many local bird lovers. There is no doubt that it was a
pigeon, and it was absolutely alone as far as we could discover.
Upon inquiry here among old residents, I am told that there was quite
a large roost on a beech ridge about forty miles west of here, which
would be at a point north of the present station of Eckerman. I have
been unable to learn just when this roosting place was discontinued,
but as near as I can make out from comparing statements and records, it
must have been in '78, '79, or '80.
I have heard of a large roosting place in northern Wisconsin which was
used as late as 1874 by vast numbers of birds. It was located to the
south and a little west of Lac Vieux Desert. At the head of the Pike
River in Wisconsin, a point probably sixty-five miles south of here,
and west into that State, the pigeons were seen in large numbers until
1872. As I understand it, in the early days they were very likely to
frequent the same section year after year when not too much disturbed.
Mr. Newell A. Eddy of Bay City, Mich., under date of Aug. 7, 1905,
wrote me as follows:
I find that I have but few notes regarding this species. On Sept. 13,
1880, I took a single bird near the city of Bangor, Maine. The sex
was not determined. This was an unusual capture for the place and the
time. A few years previous to that time, on a canoeing trip to the
headwaters of the Penobscot River, I fell in with a small flock of a
dozen or more in an old burnt-over swamp, but was unable to secure
any of them.
I presume that you have an abundance of notes on the Passenger Pigeon
in this section of the country at the time it was so abundant here, as
such information is readily obtainable from any of the old inhabitants
of this locality. I had a very interesting interview the other day
with Mr. C. E. Jennison of this city, who was one of our earliest
settlers, and he gave me a great deal of information about this bird
in the earlier days of Bay City. He also stated, which was quite
interesting, that six or seven years ago he saw a few birds at Thunder
Bay Island, near Alpena. This appears to be his last record of this
species.
The most interesting information I have was obtained from Mr. Birney
Jennison, his son, who advised me a few days ago while we were on
our way to Point Lookout, Saginaw Bay, that about the 15th of July,
this year, he saw a pair of these birds in a swale at Point Lookout
while roaming through the woods. He and I visited the same locality
about two weeks after that, but saw nothing of them. Of course there
is some likelihood that the birds Mr. Jennison saw may have been the
common Carolina doves. Mr. Birney Jennison also had a great deal of
experience with this bird in his younger days about Bay City, and
there would appear to be no question as to his ability to accurately
identify the bird.
From Mr. Neal Brown, Warsaw, Wis., May 20, 1904:
Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.
Dear Sir:--Your favor at hand with reference to the wild pigeon.
It was, I think, three or four years ago that, in hunting with Mr.
Emerson Hough near Babcock in this State in September, we killed an
unmistakable wild pigeon. I saw a few pigeons in the woods in Forest
County, in this State, about fifteen years ago. About seven years ago
I saw three near Wausau and shot one of them. There was a pigeon roost
for many years in Wood County, in this State, but it has long since
disappeared.
When I was a boy in southern Wisconsin in the 60's and 70's, wild
pigeons were so numerous as to almost darken the air. In the early 70's
there was a small roost on Bark River, near Ft. Atkinson, in this State.
The wild pigeon had practically disappeared in southern Wisconsin as
early as 1880, in fact, it was two or three years before that that I
saw the last of them.
Charles W. Ward of Queens, L. I., New York, reports that in October,
1883, he saw a flock of at least one hundred Passenger Pigeons along
the Manistee River in Township 26-5 and the following year about one
dozen nested in a Spruce swamp near Orchard Lake on his old homestead.
He often saw the nest and the birds. He remembers the time as being
the season of the year when huckleberries were ripe, for he was
berry-picking when he first observed them.
The writer of the following newspaper clipping of recent date is
emphatically skeptical regarding the present-day existence of even an
isolated pigeon:
LAST PIGEON FLIGHT IN IOSCO IN 1880
MILLIONS PASSED THROUGH THEN, BUT THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE SINCE
Tawas, Mich., July 27.--John Sims, county game and fish warden,
ridicules the idea of flocks of wild pigeons being found in Iosco
County, as was reported in some of the State papers. He says: "There
are no wild pigeons in Iosco County; nor have there been any here since
April 1, 1880. There fell about six inches of snow on that day, then
the weather cleared and the sun rose bright and clear, but it was but
for a short time, as the air was clouded with pigeons going westward.
That was the first time they had been here for a number of years, and,
although it was Sunday, everyone who had a gun was shooting or trying
to shoot, and there were lots of pigeons killed that day in nearly
all the streets of Tawas. There were simply millions of them going
westward, and those that were killed were picked up out of the snow.
Since that day there have been no wild pigeons here. We have lots of
mourning doves here, and the writer has probably seen these. There
is a certain magazine that offers $50 for a pair of wild pigeons, and
I think the sportsmen would add another $50 to it to have the wild
pigeons with us again."
In the report of the Massachusetts commissioners on fisheries and game
for the year ending December 31, 1903, is to be found the following:
The occurrence of the wild pigeon is a matter of public and scientific
interest, and for this reason, and not because it is a game bird,
reference to it is introduced here. Deputy Samuel Parker, who is
perfectly familiar with the wild pigeon, makes mention of its
appearance at Wakefield this year as follows: "In September a flock of
wild pigeons, twenty-five or thirty in number, came over Crystal Lake."
This notice of the presence of a species believed to be extinct is
interesting and must be important to ornithologists.[C]
[Footnote C: I believe that this informant was mistaken--W. B. M.]
George King, guide and trapper, living in Otsego County, Michigan, told
me in 1904 that four years before he had seen along Black River a flock
of wild pigeons, a dozen or more birds. He said there is no mistake
about it, because he was familiar with the wild pigeon early in life.
These alighted in a tree near him. He said that in 1902, also, he heard
the call of two wild pigeons, although he hunted for the birds and did
not find them.
[Illustration: COMPARATIVE SIZE OF PIGEON AND DOVE
From photo furnished by Prof W. B. Burrows, of the Michigan
Agricultural College]
I believe that six wild pigeons were actually seen in the latter part
of April of 1905 near Vanderbilt, Mich., by this George King. I have
tested his honesty and truthfulness time and time again. He told me
he was seated in the branches of an apple tree when he saw six wild
pigeons alight in another tree near him. He kept perfectly still and
watched their movements for about thirty minutes. They flew from the
old tree in which they had alighted, underneath a beech tree and began
feeding on beech nuts from the ground. He says he heard them call and
they made the same old crowing call of the wild pigeon. He was close to
them; he is perfectly familiar with the dove and knows that these six
were Passenger Pigeons. King has for many years lived in the section
that formerly was the great pigeon nesting and feeding ground of
northern Michigan.
Michigan Agricultural College,
July 14, '05.
Dear Sir:--I have been away for the past three weeks and find your
letter of June 27 here on my return. The photographs sent you were
those of the Passenger Pigeon and the Carolina dove, the one of the two
birds being intended to show relative size and appearance. It was taken
from two of the best specimens in the museum, placed at exactly the
same distance from the camera so that the picture shows the comparative
size exactly. The birds being so similar in general appearance, the
smaller one looks as if it were further away than the larger, and
this, I think, shows clearly how impossible it is for the ordinary
observer to discriminate between these two species when seen separately
in the field. Of course a mixed flock would be a different proposition,
but so far as I know the two species never mingle, and, at least in
this State, it is an unusual thing to find the Carolina dove in large
compact flocks such as are characteristic of the Passenger Pigeon. In
several cases, however, during August and September I have seen large
scattered flocks of the Carolina dove which were feeding on weed seeds
and grain in open fields, and which when disturbed, gathered into small
bands of twenty to fifty each and flew and perched very much like
Passenger Pigeons. In one case I saw at least five hundred Carolina
doves acting this way, and had hard work to convince a sportsman friend
of mine that they were not Passenger Pigeons. Finally, after getting
directly under a small tree on which a dozen or more were perched, he
was able to see that characteristic black dot on the side of the neck,
and was also able to estimate more correctly the actual size of the
birds.
Yours very truly,
Walter B. Burrows,
_Professor of Zoology._
Agricultural College,
Ingham Co., Mich., June 17, 1905.
Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.
Dear Sir:--Yours of the 16th is at hand and in reply I would say that
the Carolina dove is _rarely_ found north of the Au Sable River, and I
should not expect _ever_ to see it there in flocks in the spring; on
the other hand it is just as likely to be found _early_ in the season
as the Passenger Pigeon, since the Carolina dove winters regularly in
southern Michigan and is one of the first birds to appear in the spring
in this county, in fact not infrequently staying _here_ through the
winter. On the whole, however, I think there can be little doubt that
Mr. King's report relates to the Passenger Pigeon and not to the dove.
I have had some photographs taken of the Carolina dove and Passenger
Pigeon together, and will ask my assistant, Mr. Myers, to mail you
prints of these within a few days as soon as he has time to make some
good ones. If these do not show what you desire we will try again.
Yours very truly,
Walter B. Burrows,
_Professor of Zoology._
Mr. George E. Atkinson, to whom I am indebted for much valuable data in
this book, writes from Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, July 21, 1905, as
follows:
I was on a holiday trip on the Assiniboia River last week, and a pair
of birds flew by me at a few yards' distance, flashing the pigeon color
to all appearances in the sun and alighting on the bank. I turned my
boat and until after I shot the bird, I would have sworn it was a
pigeon, but it proved to be a large, bright plumaged dove. Atmospheric
conditions considerably affected the size so that I am convinced that
it is possible for even the best of us to be deceived, and a scientific
record must not be formed on any supposition.
Iron Mountain, Mich.,
May 30, 1904.
Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.
Dear Sir:--In reply to your letter of inquiry respecting the Passenger
Pigeon, I will say that my knowledge of it is very limited except from
hearsay, but I am credibly informed that it nested at the east end of
Deerskin Lake, Sec. 30, N44 W31, as late as 1888. Mr. Armstrong, a
timber cruiser, late a resident of this city, gave me this information.
He said there was a small colony of less than a hundred birds then.
Fire has since destroyed the timber there and he doubted if they were
still there when he told me about them. Mr. A. was a keen observer and
thoroughly reliable; had been familiar with the species when abundant
in lower Michigan, and I have great confidence in the accuracy of his
reports. I used to see them as late as 1883 in this vicinity. They
were shot in the summer of 1883 during the blueberry season. I should
estimate that as many as fifty birds were taken that summer. I cannot
imagine why they should have disappeared from this region. I have no
reports concerning the birds from the north shore.
In 1897 a young bird was taken in the neighboring town of Norway with a
broken wing and identified by hunters who had known the species in the
day of its abundance.
Dr. J. D. Cameron of this city informs me that he saw a flock of about
fifty birds flying over the St. George Hospital of this place on the
28th of October, 1900. He was positive that he was not mistaken, as
the birds were flying low, and he had formerly been well acquainted
with the species in Canada. You can take this latter for what it is
worth. Dr. C's. veracity is beyond question, but whether he could have
mistaken some other birds for the pigeons I am not prepared to say.
He is not interested in ornithology and I would not expect him to
recognize ordinary birds, but he may have hunted the wild pigeon in his
younger days and so be familiar with its manner of flight. I cannot
imagine any other birds that he could mistake for them.
I have an idea that I may have seen one myself in the summer of 1900,
but am not sufficiently well acquainted with it to recognize it at
sight. I fired at it with a .22 rifle, and the peculiar maneuvers
which it executed in the air as the bullet passed, attracted my
attention. I was afterward told that the wild pigeon tumbled in the air
that way when fired at. I thought at first that it was hit.
Yours truly,
E. E. Brewster.
CHAPTER XIII
What Became of the Wild Pigeon?
By Sullivan Cook, from "Forest and Stream," March 14, 1903.[D]
[Footnote D: I think that anyone who reads this article will be, like
myself, satisfied that the destruction of the pigeons was wrought to
gratify the avarice and love of gain of a few men who slaughtered them
until they were virtually exterminated.--W. B. M.]
When a boy and living in northern Ohio, I often had to go with a gun
and drive the pigeons from the newly sown fields of wheat. At that time
wheat was sown broadcast, and pigeons would come by the thousands and
pick up the wheat before it could be covered with the drag. My father
would say, "Get the gun and shoot at every pigeon you see," and often I
would see them coming from the woods and alighting on the newly sowed
field. They would alight until the ground was fairly blue with these
beautiful birds.
I would secrete myself in a fence corner, and as these birds would
alight on the ground they would form themselves in a long row,
canvassing the field for grain, and as the rear birds raised up and
flew over those in front, they reminded one of the little breakers on
the ocean beach, and as they came along in this form, they resembled a
windrow of hay rolling across the field.
I would wait until the end of this wave was opposite my hiding place
and then arise and fire into this windrow of living, animated beauty,
and I have picked up as many as twenty-seven dead birds killed at a
single shot with an old flintlock smooth bore. Later in the fall these
birds would come in countless millions to feed on the wild mast of
beech nuts and acorns, and every evening they would pass over our home,
going west of our place to what was known as Lodi Swamp.
Many and many a time have I seen clouds of birds that extended as far
as the eye could reach, and the sound of their wings was like the roar
of a tempest. And for those who are not acquainted with the habits
and flight of these birds, I wish to say that once in the month of
November, while these pigeons were going from their feeding grounds
to this roost in the Lodi Swamp, they were met with a storm of sleet
and snow. The wind blew so hard that they could not breast it and were
compelled to alight in a sugar orchard near our place. This orchard
consisted of twenty acres, where the timber had all been cut out,
except the maples, and when they commenced alighting, the trees already
partially loaded with snow and ice, and the vast flock of pigeons being
attracted by those alighting, all sought the same resting place.
Such vast numbers alighted that in a short time the branches of the
trees were broken and as fast as one tree gave way those birds would
alight on the already loaded tree adjoining, and, that, too, was
stripped of its long and limber branches. Suffice it to say that in a
half hour's time this beautiful sugar orchard was entirely ruined by
the loads of birds which had attempted to rest from the storm.
About this time I enjoyed my first pigeon hunt in a roost. Being a boy
about sixteen years of age, having a brother about thirteen, and as we
had seen the pigeons going by to their roost for hours and knowing that
many people went there every night to shoot pigeons on the roost, my
brother and I were seized with a desire to go and enjoy this exciting
sport. Then arose the difficulty of a gun suitable for the occasion.
As we had nothing but a small-bore rifle and not owning a shotgun, we
appealed to father as to what we should do for a gun. We had previously
gained his consent to our going. He suggested that we take the old
horse pistol; one of the Revolutionary time, which had been kept in the
family as a reminder of troublesome years.
Let the young man of to-day, who hunts with the improved breechloader,
think of two boys starting pigeon hunting, their only outfit consisting
of a horse pistol, barrel twelve inches long, caliber 12-gauge,
flintlock, one pound of No. 4 shot, a quarter of a pound of powder, a
pocket full of old newspaper for wadding, a two-bushel bag to carry
game in, and a tin lantern. Thus equipped, we started for the pigeon
roost a little after dark. Although three miles from the roost when
we started from home, we could hear the sullen roar of that myriad of
birds, and the sound increased in volume as we approached the roost,
till it became as the roar of the breakers upon the beach.
As we approached the swamp where the birds roosted, a few scattered
birds were frightened from the roost along the edge of the swamp. These
scattering birds we could not shoot, but kept advancing further into
the swamp. As we approached this vast body of birds, which bent the
alders flat to the ground, we could see every now and then ahead of us
a small pyramid which looked like a haystack in the darkness, and as
we approached what appeared to be this haystack, the frightened birds
would fly from the bended alders, and we would find ourselves standing
in the midst of a diminutive forest of small trees of alders and
willows.
We now found these apparent haystacks were only small elms or willows
completely loaded down with live birds. My brother suggested that I
shoot at the next "haystack." So we advanced along very carefully among
the now upright alders till we came to where it was a perfect roar of
voices and wings, and just ahead of us we saw one of those mysterious
objects which so resembled a haystack.
My brother suggested that I aim at the center of it and let the old
horse pistol go. I instantly obeyed his suggestion, pointing as best I
could in the dim light at the center of that form, and pulled. There
was a flash and a roar, and the very atmosphere seemed to be alive
with flying, chattering birds. The old tin lantern was lighted. The
horse pistol was hunted for, as it had recoiled with such force I had
lost hold of it. The gun being found, we then approached as nearly as
we could the place where I had shot at the stack. From this discharge
we picked up eighteen pigeons and saw some hobbling away into thick
brush, from which we could not recover them. After an hour of this kind
of hunting our bag was full of pigeons, and our tallow candle in the
lantern nearly consumed. We retraced our steps out of the swamp, and
about 11 o'clock at night arrived home well satisfied with the night's
hunt in the pigeon roost. We had had acres of enjoyment and had brought
home bushels of pigeons.
This is only to give an idea of what pigeons were in northern Ohio in
the days of my boyhood. This was in the years of 1844 to 1846. In 1854,
having grown to man's estate, I moved to Michigan and settled in Cass
County, where I built a log house and began clearing up a farm. After
having cleared three or four fields around my house, one morning one of
my girls came running in from out of doors and said: "Pa, come out and
see the pigeons."
I went to the door and saw scooting across my fields, as it seemed
skimming the surface of the earth, flock after flock of the birds,
one coming close upon the heels of another. I hastened into the house
and grasped my double barreled shotgun, powder flask and shot pouch;
my little girl, then a miss of twelve summers, following me. I took a
stand on a slight rise in the middle of a five-acre field and commenced
shooting, you might say, at wads of pigeons, so closely huddled were
they as they went by. Letting the birds get opposite me and firing
across the flock, I was enabled to kill from three to fifteen pigeons
at a shot. And my girl was wildly excited, picking up the dead birds
and catching the winged ones and bringing them to me.
You never saw two mortals more busy than we were for a half hour. At
this time my wife called for breakfast, as we were near the house, and
I found my stock of ammunition nearly exhausted. We went into the house
for our breakfast and when we came out the birds were flying as thickly
as ever. She says, let us count the pigeons and see how many we have.
We found we had killed and picked up in this short time twenty-three
dozen. My wife said I had better take them to Three Rivers, which
was our nearest town, and sell them. And as my ammunition was about
exhausted, I hitched up my team, took twenty dozen of the birds and
drove ten miles to the station, sold my birds for sixty-five cents a
dozen and returned home well satisfied with my day's work, and having
on hand a good supply of ammunition for the next morning's flight.
Now I wish to pass along, the lapse of time being about sixteen years.
During this time I had removed from Cass County to Van Buren County,
where I had located in the beautiful village of Hartford. In the year
1869 or 1870, the pigeoners, a class of men who lived in Hartford, made
a business of netting pigeons, and they are living here yet, and not
one of them feels any pride in the part he took in the destruction of
these beautiful birds. In March, 1869, word was received that a large
flight of pigeons were coming north through the State of Indiana. These
men, who had followed the pigeons for years, said, "As we have snow on
the ground they will be sure to nest near here, and as we have had a
big crop of beech nuts and acorns last fall they will be sure to stop
to get the benefit of this mast." A queer thing about the pigeon was
that he always built his nest on the borders of the snow, that is,
where the ground underneath was covered with snow.
Sure enough, as predicted, in two days after receiving notice of the
flight of the birds from Indiana, myriads of pigeons were passing north
along the east shore of Lake Michigan, and soon scattering flocks
were seen going south towards the bare ground. In a few days word was
received that pigeons had gone to nesting in what was then called
Deerfield Township, a vast body of hardwood and hemlock timber. Then it
was that the pigeon killers, with their nets, stool birds and flyers
commenced making preparations for the slaughter of the beautiful birds
when they began laying their eggs. This takes place only three or four
days after they commence nesting, as a pigeon's nest is the simplest
nest ever built by a bird seen in a tree. It consists of a few little
twigs laid crosswise, without moss or lining of any kind, and the lay
of eggs is but one. As soon as one egg is laid, they commence sitting,
and the male pigeon is quite a gentleman in his way, taking his turn
and sitting one-half of the time.
In about twelve or fourteen days--some claim twenty--the young pigeon
is hatched. As soon as hatched the male and female birds commence
feeding on what is known as marsh feed, that is, on low, springy
ground. And from this feed is supplied to both the male and female bird
what is known as pigeon's milk, forming inside of the crop a sort of
curd, on which the young pigeon is fed by both father and mother, who
supply this food. The young bird is gorged with this food, and in a few
days becomes as heavy as the parent bird. Another singular thing about
the wild pigeon is that as the snow melts and the ground is left bare
where the nesting is, the old birds never eat the nuts in the nesting,
but leave them for the benefit of the young one, and so when he comes
off the nest he always finds an abundance of food at his very door,
as it were. As soon as the young birds are able to leave the nest and
begin feeding on the ground in the nesting, the old birds immediately
forsake them, move again on to the borders of the snow and start
another nesting. In five or ten days the young birds will follow in
the direction of the old birds.
When the young birds first come off the nest and commence feeding on
the ground, they are fat as balls of butter, but in ten days from this
time, when they start on their northern flight to follow their mother
bird, they are poor as snakes, and almost unfit to eat, while, when
they first leave the nest they are the most palatable morsel man ever
tasted. However, in about forty days from the time they began nesting
to the time they took their northern flight, there were shipped from
Hartford and vicinity, three carloads a day of these beautiful meteors
of the sky. Each car containing 150 barrels with 35 dozen in a barrel,
making the daily shipment 24,750 dozen.
Young men who are now hunting for something to shoot and wondering
what has become of our game, must hear with anger and regret such
reports as this from western Michigan in the days gone by: "In three
years' time there were caught and shipped to New York and other eastern
cities 990,000 dozen pigeons, and in the two succeeding years it was
estimated by the same men who caught the pigeons at Hartford that there
were one-third more shipped from Shelby than from Hartford; and from
Petoskey, Emmett County, two years later, it is now claimed by C. H.
Engle, a resident of this town, who was a participant in this ungodly
slaughter, that there were shipped five carloads a day for thirty
days, with an average of 8,250 dozen to the carload. Now, when one asks
you what has become of the wild pigeons, refer them to C. H. Engle,
Stephen Stowe, Chas. Sherburne, and Hiram Corwin, and a man by the name
of Miles from Wisconsin, Mr. Miles having caught 500 dozen in a single
day. And when you are asked what has become of the wild pigeons, figure
up the shipping bills, and they will show what has become of this, the
grandest game bird that ever cleft the air of any continent."
My young friends, I want to humbly ask your forgiveness for having
taken a small part in the destruction of this, the most exciting of
sport. And there is not one of us but is ashamed of the slaughter which
has robbed you of enjoyment. If we had been restrained by laws of
humanity, you, too, could have enjoyed this sport for years to come.
CHAPTER XIV
A Novel Theory of Extinction
By C. H. Ames and Robert Ridgway
Boston, March 8, 1906.
Mr. W. B. Mershon:
Dear Sir:--Thank you for your note of the third in reply to mine of
the first, in regard to your book on the Passenger Pigeon. I note that
you say:
"There is room to make additions if you think you have something
that would be interesting, and would like to submit it to me for my
consideration."
Thanking you for your courtesy in the matter, I beg to say that I have
long had great interest in the problem of the so sudden and complete
destruction of this great species, and have from the first been quite
unable to believe that the ordinarily assigned agencies for the
destruction of the pigeon were adequate, or anywhere near adequate, to
make a destruction so sudden and complete.
Several accounts which have come to my notice have strengthened my
view. I know well that the attack of man and beast upon the pigeons
in their rookeries, or breeding places, was fierce, persistent and
enormously destructive, and that at these breeding places the
destroyers gathered in great numbers, but, with my vivid recollection
of the tremendous flights of pigeons which I myself saw in the '60's
in northern Illinois, the wide distribution of the bird, and what I
know of its migratory habits (I wish I knew very much more about these
habits), I cannot think that in so few years the practical destruction
of the species could be effected by the means referred to.
Years ago--I cannot tell how many, but I am confident it must have been
at about the time of the disappearance of the great pigeon flights--I
read an account, either in or quoted from a New Orleans newspaper,
giving the stories of several ship captains and sailors who had arrived
in New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico. They stated that they had, in
crossing the Gulf, sailed over leagues and leagues of water covered,
and covered thickly, with dead pigeons. The supposition was that an
enormous flight of the pigeons crossing the waters of the Gulf had been
overwhelmed by a cyclone, or some such atmospheric disturbance, and
that the birds had been whirled into the surf and drowned.
I have been told by competent ornithologists connected with the Boston
Society of Natural History that Pigeon Cove, a well-known and much
frequented extremity of Cape Ann, near Gloucester, Mass., received
its name from the fact that a large flight of pigeons was similarly
overwhelmed in flying along the Atlantic near that place, and that
their bodies covered the shore in "windrows."
Not more than two years ago, if so long, I read a lengthy and signed
account in a Montreal paper of a similar catastrophe to a great flight
of pigeons in attempting to cross Lake Michigan, and similar statement
was made that for miles the beach above Milwaukee was heaped and piled
with "windrows" of dead pigeons.
Within two or three years several accounts have reached us, bearing
every mark of believability, that considerable flights of geese, swans
and ducks have been drowned in the surf off the New Jersey and Maryland
shores. These flights of birds have been overwhelmed in a sudden storm
or gale of wind, which beat them down into the surf where they were
drowned, their bodies drifting about, and some of them being thrown up
on the shore.
These accounts have come from fishermen, sportsmen and others, and I
see no reason whatever to doubt that a flight of birds of any species
known could easily be destroyed if caught off shore in some of the
wind storms of which we have so many instances. I have frequently in
_Forest and Stream_ propounded my theory and asked for information
about it before it became too late. The whole theory stands or falls,
as it seems to me, with the ascertainment of the southern limit of the
migration of the great pigeon flight. If the birds did not cross the
Gulf of Mexico there is far less likelihood of my theory being the
correct one, though my inquiries in _Forest and Stream_ elicited one
very circumstantial account of an enormous destruction of pigeons on
the Gulf Coast, the birds being blown into the Gulf and destroyed by
a fierce "norther" which beat down the coast for two or three days.
Persons familiar with this phenomena of the Texas "norther" need no
help to their imaginations in seeing how a pigeon flight, being caught
on the shores of the Gulf by such a wind could be practically destroyed.
I do not know that you will think my theory worth any consideration,
but I have finally interested a number of ornithologists who share my
view that the final and sudden wiping out of the great bulk of the
pigeon flight must have been by some cataclysmic agency. It seems to
me that the question is one of great interest from the point of view
of the naturalist and biologist, and well worth serious investigation
by all who care for these things. I shall be pleased to know if what I
have said seems to you of interest and to have any weight.
Wishing you all success in your admirable undertaking, and anticipating
with great pleasure the results of your studies in your proposed book,
I am,
Yours very truly,
C. H. Ames.
_Memorandum prepared by Mr. Robert Ridgway, Curator of the Division
of Birds, U. S. National Museum, to accompany letter to Mr. W. B.
Mershon, Saginaw, Mich._
If Mr. Mershon will communicate on the subject of Passenger Pigeons
with Mr. William Brewster,[E] 145 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass., he
may get some data which will (or ought to) dismiss from consideration
the idea that the passenger pigeon could have been exterminated in the
manner suggested by Mr. Ames. During a visit to northern Michigan, Mr.
Brewster talked with a great many pigeon netters. I have forgotten
the figures, and may be very inexact in my recollection of them, but
my recollection is that at one "roost" there were one hundred netters
who averaged one thousand (it may have been ten thousand) pigeons per
day. When it is considered that this was the rate of destruction at one
locality in one State only, that the same was going on in other States,
and that tens of thousands were being killed by hunters and others, and
this year after year, I cannot see anything surprising in the eventual
extermination of the species, no matter how numerously represented
originally.
[Footnote E: See Chapter VII, "Netting the Pigeon" by Wm. Brewster.]
Nothing in the history of the Passenger Pigeon is more certainly known
than the fact that its range to the southward _did not extend beyond
the United States_. There is a single Cuban record, but the occurrence
was purely accidental. The migrations of the Passenger Pigeon were
wholly different in their character from those of true emigrants, that
is to say, they were influenced or controlled purely by the matter of
food supply, as in the case of the robin and some other birds, and the
flights were as often from west to east and _vice versa_ as from south
to north or north to south; in short, the flocks moved about in various
directions in their search for food or nesting places. For myself, I
do not believe in the story of drowning in the Gulf of Mexico for two
reasons. In the first place the birds are extremely unlikely to have
been there, a hurricane from the _northward_ being absolutely necessary
to explain their presence in that quarter, and, in the second place,
no such explanation is needed in view of what is known to be the facts
concerning their wholesale destruction by human agency alone.
The range of the Passenger Pigeon was limited to the mixed hardwood
forest region of the eastern United States and Canada, and any that
occurred beyond were stragglers, pure and simple. Consequently it was
not found, except as stragglers, in the long-leaf pine belt of the
Gulf Coast, but only on the uplands from northern or middle Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, northward.
CHAPTER XV
News from John Burroughs
When the following report from so high an authority as John Burroughs
appeared in _Forest and Stream_ it seemed too important to be
overlooked. I therefore ventured to open a correspondence with this
famous naturalist, even suggesting that his informants might have
mistaken some other species of migratory bird for a flight of wild
pigeons. I had once made a similar mistake in Texas when the northern
migration of the curlews was in full flight. Countless flocks of them
were streaming past at a considerable distance from me, and I could
have sworn they were wild pigeons until I was lucky enough to see them
at much closer range. Even now the newspapers east and west contain
an annual crop of wild pigeon reports, most of which are to be found
fake reports upon careful investigation. It has happened often that
hunters and woodsmen mistake the wild dove for the pigeon, and refuse
to believe otherwise. The correspondence explains itself, however, and
is a valuable contribution to the subject in hand.
W. B. M.
A FLOCK OF WILD PIGEONS[F]
[Footnote F: From _Forest and Stream_, May 19, 1906.]
West Park, N. Y., May 11th.
Editor _Forest and Stream_:
I have received evidence which is to me entirely convincing that a
large flock of Passenger Pigeons was seen to pass over the village
of Prattsville, Greene County, this State, late one afternoon about
the middle of April. The fact was first reported in the local paper,
the Prattsville _News_. An old boyhood schoolmate of mine, Charles
W. Benton, was, with others, reported to have seen them. I have
corresponded with Mr. Benton and have no doubt the pigeons were seen
as stated. Mr. Benton saw pigeons, clouds of them, in his boyhood, and
could not well be mistaken. He says it was about 5 o'clock, and that
the flock stretched out across the valley about one-half mile and must
have contained many hundreds. It came from the southeast, and went
northwest. Mr. Benton says that a large flock was reported last year as
having passed over the village of Catskill, and that a wild pigeon was
shot near Prattsville last fall. A friend of mine saw two pigeons in
the woods at West Point a year or so ago.
I have no doubt, therefore, that the wild pigeon is still with us, and
that if protected we may yet see them in something like their numbers
of thirty years ago.
John Burroughs.
West Park, N. Y., May 27, 1906.
To W. B. Mershon:
Dear Sir:--I can give you no more definite information about that flock
of pigeons than I reported to _Forest and Stream_. I have no doubt
about the fact. If you will write to C. W. Benton, Prattsville, N. Y.,
he can put you in communication with several people who saw the flock.
I am just about to write to _Forest and Stream_ of another very large
flock of pigeons that was seen to pass over the city of Kingston,
N. Y., on the morning of the 15th. I have written to Judge A. T.
Clearwater of that city, who replies that he has talked with many
persons who saw the pigeons and who had seen the pigeons years ago.
The flock is described as a mile long. I am going up to Kingston soon
to question the persons who saw the flock. If I learn anything to
discredit the story I will let you know. We never have a flight of any
birds here that could be mistaken for pigeons by any one who had ever
seen the latter. If these flocks were pigeons, where have they been
hiding all these years?
Very sincerely yours,
John Burroughs.
Prattsville, N. Y., June 9, 1906.
W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.:
Dear Sir:--Yours of the 6th inst. is before me and I hasten to reply.
Now, in the first place, you speak of John Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs
and I went to school together when we were boys, and, as you say, he is
a good authority on natural history, and I have had some communication
with him on the pigeon question. I live in the heart of the Catskill
Mountains, which was once a great resort for wild pigeons, and I have
seen a vast number of them, dating back as far as 1848, when this
country was literally covered with them, and for some years after.
Now in regard to the wild pigeons I saw this spring. I was going to
my home in the village of Prattsville, in company with a man by the
name of M. E. Kreiger, one Sunday afternoon, and when near my house we
stopped to talk a few minutes, when, on looking up, we saw the flock of
pigeons. They were coming from the southeast and went to the northwest.
The flock was about one-half mile long and flew in the same manner as
pigeons of old. There were thousands of them. Now in regard to ducks,
teal and plover, we never see any of them here in the mountains, though
once in a while a few ducks, but only in small flocks of seven or eight
in a bunch; and there are no birds that gather in flocks here but crows
in the fall, but never at any other time. Wild geese fly over here in
the fall.
The _Daily Leader_, a daily paper published in Kingston, Ulster County,
N. Y., contained an item a few weeks since stating that a flock of wild
pigeons passed over the city a short time ago. The flock was about one
mile long and contained many thousands. And in the spring of 1905, the
_Catskill Recorder_, a newspaper published in this county, reported
seeing a flock similar to the one seen at Kingston.
Wishing you success on your fishing trip, I am,
Yours truly,
C. W. Benton.
THE SULLIVAN COUNTY PIGEONS
West Park, N. Y., June 30th.
Editor _Forest and Stream_:
Since I wrote you a few weeks ago, I have been looking up the men who
were reported to have seen wild pigeons recently. I have seen six men
who are positive they have seen flocks of wild pigeons--some of them
two years ago, and some of them this past spring. As these men were all
past middle age and had been familiar with the pigeon thirty and forty
years ago and were, moreover, men reported truthful and sober by their
neighbors, and who impressed me as being entirely reliable, I feel
bound to credit their several statements. At De Bruce, Sullivan County,
Mr. Cooper, the postmaster and village blacksmith, said he had seen a
large flock of pigeons in the fall two years ago. They were about a
buckwheat field. He pointed out the hill about which they were flying.
Mr. Cooper had shot and trapped a great many pigeons years ago, and was
sure he could not mistake any other bird for a pigeon. A farmer, whose
name I do not now remember and who heard Mr. Cooper's statement, said
he saw a large flock last fall about a buckwheat field, in the same
town. This man was reported to me as perfectly reliable, and he gave me
that impression.
At Port Ewen, I met a Hudson River shad fisherman, Mr. Van Vliet, who
said he had seen early one morning in April or May, two years ago,
a flock of wild pigeons over the Hudson. He estimated the flock as
containing seventy or eighty birds. Mr. Van Vliet is a man nearly
seventy years old, and one cannot look into his face and have him speak
and doubt for a moment the truth of what he is saying. When I asked him
if he knew the wild pigeon, he smiled good-humoredly and said he knew
them as well as he knew anything; he had lived in the time of pigeons,
and had killed hundreds of them.
Another man, one of the leading grocerymen of Port Ewen, said he had
seen a very large flock of pigeons between 4 and 5 o'clock on May 15
last, flying over as he was on his way to open his store. His hired
man, who was with him, also saw them. Mr. Van Leuven had also seen
pigeons in his youth and described to me accurately their manner of
flight and the form of the flock against the sky. A neighbor of his
told me he had seen a flock of fifteen or twenty pigeons on a foggy
morning only a few days before. The rush of their wings overhead first
attracted his attention to them. But he had never seen wild pigeons,
and might have been deceived, though he was sure they were pigeons by
their speed and general look.
None of these men could have had any motive in trying to deceive me,
and I feel bound to credit their stories. Their statements, taken in
connection with the statement of my old schoolfellow at Prattsville, N.
Y., of whom I wrote you, makes me believe that there is a large flock
of wild pigeons that still at times frequents this part of the State,
and perhaps breeds somewhere in the wilds of Sullivan or Ulster County.
But they ought to be heard from elsewhere--from the south or southwest
in winter.
John Burroughs.
P. S.--Just as I finished the above, I came upon the following in the
Poughkeepsie _Sunday Courier_:
"We noticed recently an item asking whether wild pigeons are returning.
Sullivan County people seem to be taking the lead in answering the
question, but a Dutchess County farmer named David Rosell, living near
Fishkill Plains, who was familiar with the aforesaid birds in old days,
reports having seen a flock of about thirty feeding on his buckwheat
patch one morning last week, which gives evidence that the birds are
not extinct as supposed, but a flock may merely be taking a tour around
the world like Magellan of old. Mr. Rosell stated that he had not
seen any before in about forty years. At first sight, he could hardly
believe his eyes, but he was not long in becoming convinced of their
identity."
CHAPTER XVI
The Pigeon in Manitoba[G]
By George E. Atkinson
[Footnote G: This paper was read at a meeting of the Manitoba
Historical and Scientific Society at Winnepeg in 1905, by the author, a
naturalist, residing at Portage la Prairie.]
While the biological history of any country records the decrease
and disappearance of many forms of life due to just or unjust
circumstances, it remains for the historical records of North America
to reveal a career of human selfishness which may be considered the
paragon. Within four centuries of North American civilization (or
modified barbarism) we can be credited with the wiping into the past
of at least three species of animal life originally so phenomenally
abundant and so strikingly characteristic in themselves as to evoke
the wonder and amazement of the entire world. And, sad to relate,
so effectual has been the extermination, that it is doubtful if our
descendants a few generations hence will be able to learn anything
whatever about them save through the medium of books. While herein
again we shall be just subjects of their censure for having manifestly
failed to preserve in history's archives any material amount of
specific information.
The early settlers landing upon the Atlantic coast between Newfoundland
and the Carolinas found them in possession of armies of great auks, and
the few scraps of authenticated history which we now possess disclose a
most iniquitous course of wanton slaughter and destruction which ended
in the complete extinction of the bird over sixty years ago. Yet in the
face of this destruction there remain but four mounted specimens and
two eggs in the collections of North America to-day, while but seventy
skins remain in the collections of the entire world.
If possible, more ruthless and inhuman was the carnage waged against
the noble buffalo, the countless thousands of which roaming over virgin
prairies excited the wonder and amazement of the entire sporting and
scientific world, and which, to-day, are represented only in the
zoölogical parks, where all individuality will eventually be lost in
domestication.
Coincident almost with the passing of the buffalo we have to record
the decline and fall of the Passenger Pigeon, a bird which aroused
the excitement and wonder of the entire world during the first half
of the last century because of its phenomenal numbers; a bird also
which stood out unique in character and individuality among the 300
described pigeons of the world and which won the admiration of every
ornithologist who was fortunate enough to have experience with it
living or dead. Yet it was not exempt from the oppression of its human
foe, who has been instrumental, through interference with the breeding
and feeding grounds and through a continued persecution and ruthless
slaughter for the market, in reducing the species almost beyond the
hope of salvation.
The Passenger Pigeon, the species under observation, was first
described under the genus _Columba_, or type pigeons, but subsequently
Swainson separated it from these and placed it under the genus
_Ectopistes_ because of the greater length of wing and tail.
Generically named _Ectopistes_, meaning moving about or wandering, and
specifically named _Migratoria_, meaning migratory, we have a technical
name implying not only a species of migrating annually to and from
their breeding ground, but one given to moving about from season to
season, selecting the most congenial environment for both breeding and
feeding.
... With all the knowledge we have possessed of the inestimable
multitudes which existed during the early part of the last century,
and with their decline, begun and noted generally in the later sixties
and early seventies, we still find that no steps whatever were taken
to prevent their possible depletion, and few records of any value are
made of the continuance or speed of this decrease; and not until the
last decade of the century do we awake to the fact that the pigeons
are gone beyond the possibility of a return in any numbers. When a
few years later reports are made that pigeons still exist and are
again increasing, scientific investigation shows that the mourning
dove has been mistaken for the pigeon or that the band-tailed pigeon
of California is taken for the old Passenger Pigeon, and so we have
continued since the early nineties investigating rumors of their
appearance from all over America, north and south, and the West India
Islands, but all reports point us to the past for the pigeon and some
other species under suspicion.... I doubt very much if the historian
desirous of compiling any historical work would find himself confronted
with such a decided blank in historical records during an important
period as that confronted in the compilation of a historical record of
the Passenger Pigeon within any district which it formerly frequented
during the period from about 1870, when the decline was first noticed,
to 1890, when the birds had practically passed away....
In this matter, Mr. J. H. Fleming of Toronto, in writing me, says:
"The pigeons seem to have gone off like dynamite. Nobody expected it
and nobody prepared a series of skins"; and to this I can add that no
one seems to have made any series of records of the birds from year
to year. Since their disappearance, however, things have changed:
everybody is alert for pigeons, and everybody has a theory; but beyond
offering subject of social conversation, or awakening a recital of old
pigeon experiences from the old timers, these rumors and theories seem
to return to the winds from whence they came.
The latest theory advanced to me by a correspondent is the possibility
of some disturbance of the elements in the shape of a cyclone, or a
storm striking a migrating host in crossing the Gulf of Mexico and
destroying them almost completely. This is a plausible theory, but I am
unable to conceive how such immense hosts of pigeons as are recorded up
to 1865 could possibly have met with sudden disaster in this manner,
even in the center of the Gulf, without leaving some wreckage to tell
the story, and such is not recorded. While again I do not think that
the entire host would cross the Gulf, but that a large portion of
the migrating birds would take an overland route through Mexico and
Central America to the southern boundary of their flight. Personally
I am inclined to cherish my original contentions that the continued
disturbance of the breeding and feeding grounds, both by the slaughter
of the birds for market and by the dissipating of the original immense
colonies by the clearing of the hardwood and pine forests of the United
States and eastern Canada, compelling these sections of the main column
to travel farther in search of congenial environment, curtailing the
breeding season, and, I have no doubt, frequently preventing many from
breeding for several seasons.
While the persistent persecution and destruction for the market was
in no way proportionately lessened in the vicinity of these smaller
colonies as long as a sufficient number of the birds remained to make
the traffic profitable, it can at once be seen that this continued
drain upon these smaller colonies, when other conditions were becoming
more difficult for the birds to contend with, would be instrumental in
depleting the entire former main column to a point when netting and
shooting were no longer profitable; and, the remnant of these colonies
having to run a gantlet of persecution over their entire course of
migration to and from winter quarters, there could be but one result to
such proceeding, and that one we now face; extermination.
Of these records made during the pigeons' day, as we might call it,
the earliest we have are those made by a Mr. T. Hutchins, who was a
Hudson's Bay Company trader, operating for some twenty-five years
in the district adjacent to Hudson's Bay, during which time he made
copious notes of the birds frequenting that district, which were
afterwards published by Pennant in his "Arctic Zoölogy" in 1875. He
says in part:
"The first pigeon I shall take note of is one I received at Severn in
1771; and, having sent it home to Mr. Pennant, he informed me that it
was the _migratoria_ species. They are very numerous inland and visit
our settlement in the summer. They are plentiful about Moose Factory
and inland, where they breed, choosing an arboreous situation. The
gentlemen number them among the many delicacies the Hudson's Bay
affords our tables. It is a hardy bird, continuing with us until
December. In summer their food is berries, but after these are covered
with snow, they feed upon the juniper buds. They lay two eggs and
are gregarious. About 1756 these birds migrated as far north as York
Factory, but remained only two days."
In a report issued in 1795, Samuel Hearne also reports the birds being
abundant inland from the southern portion of Hudson's Bay, but states
that, though good eating, they were seldom fat.
The first provincial record is that made by Sir John Richardson in
1827, in which he says: "A few hordes of Indians who frequent the low
floods districts at the south end of Lake Winnipeg subsist principally
on the pigeons during the period when the sturgeon fishing is
unproductive and the wild rice is still unripened, but farther north
the birds are too few in numbers to furnish material diet."
I presume that he means farther up the Lake Winnipeg shores, since
Hutchins and Hearne both reported them common nearer Hudson's Bay.
The early records of the birds in eastern Canada in later years
corroborate the earlier statements of Wilson and Audubon in almost
every particular; and one acquainted with the timbered conditions of
the country to the immediate west of the Red River Valley and north of
the American boundary line can readily appreciate the utter inadequacy
of an acceptable food supply for these countless millions of pigeons;
and we can also readily understand how very soon the breaking up of
the original hardwood forests of eastern Canada would tend to decrease
the visible food supply and cause these hungry millions to seek new
pastures.
The breaking of these feeding grounds would first be instrumental in
scattering or breaking up the largest flocks, and even the very long
distances the bird was able to fly from breeding to feeding ground
would be exceeded, necessitating next the nesting in smaller colonies,
where careless nesting habits with continued changing conditions
would tend to continue to decline their numbers, while the tenacity
with which even the smaller roosts were clung to by man, like leeches
to a frog, and the hapless victim shot, netted and stolen from the
nest before maturity, was but another effectual and not the least
responsible agent in the relegation of the pigeon to that past from
which none return.
When I decided to attempt the preparation of a review history of the
pigeon in Manitoba, I felt that, having had practically no experience
with the bird myself, I should have to depend upon the reports of
representative pioneers of the country for my facts as to the numbers
of the birds formerly found here, and the period of their decline
and disappearance. I accordingly drafted a series of questions which
I submitted to these gentlemen, and I have to tender them all my
sincere thanks, as well as that of the scientific world, for the ready
responses and the conciseness of the information received.
One of the earliest residents of Portage la Prairie, Mr. George A.
Garrioch, informs me:
"I was born in Manitoba and came to Portage la Prairie about 1853. I
was then only about six years old, and as far back as I can remember
pigeons were very numerous.
"They passed over every spring, usually during the mornings, in very
large flocks, following each other in rapid succession.
"I do not think they bred in any numbers in the province, as I only
remember seeing one nest; this contained two eggs.
"The birds, to my recollection, were most numerous in the fifties, and
the decline was noticed in the later sixties and continued until the
early eighties, when they disappeared. I have observed none since until
last year, when I am positive I saw a single male bird south of the
town of Portage la Prairie."
Mr. Angus Sutherland of Winnipeg, in reply to my interrogation, states:
"I was born in the present city of Winnipeg and have lived here over
fifty years. The wild pigeons were very numerous in my boyhood. They
frequented the mixed woods about the city, and while undoubtedly
many birds bred here, I remember no extensive breeding colonies in
the province, and believe the great majority passed farther north to
breed. About 1870 the decrease in their numbers was most pronouncedly
manifest, this decline continuing until the early eighties, when they
had apparently all disappeared, and I have seen only occasional birds
since, and none of late years."
Mr. W. J. McLean, formerly of the Hudson's Bay Company and at present
a resident of Winnipeg, sends me some valuable information, which
supports my contention regarding the influence of food supply. He
writes:
"I came to the Red River Settlement in 1860 and found the pigeons
very plentiful on my arrival. The birds came in many thousands, and
great numbers of them bred in the northeastern portion of the province
through the district north of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake,
where the cranberry and blueberry are abundant. These fruits constitute
their chief food supply, as they remain on the bushes and retain much
of their food properties until well on into the summer following their
growth. They also feed largely on acorns wherever they abound. The
decline began about the early seventies, and 1877 was the first year
in which I encountered large flocks of them passing northwesterly from
White Sand River near Fort Pelly. This was on a dull, drizzling day
about the middle of May, and I presume they were then heading towards
the Barren Grounds district, where the blueberry and the cranberry are
very abundant."
Mr. E. H. G. G. Hay, formerly police magistrate of Portage la Prairie,
now of St. Andrews, reports:
"I came to the country in June, 1861, and found that the pigeons were
abundant previous to my arrival. To give you an idea of their numbers,
a Mr. Thompson of St. Andrews some mornings caught with a net about ten
feet square as many as eighty dozen, and in the spring of 1864 I fired
into a flock as they rose from the ground and picked up seventeen birds.
"The birds were mostly migratory in what is now known as Manitoba,
and most of them went farther north after the seeding season. I never
heard of any extensive rookeries such as those observed in the east
and south. The few that bred here frequented mixed poplar and spruce.
They seemed most numerous in the sixties and began to show signs of
decreasing about 1869 or 1870, and by 1875 they had all disappeared and
I have only seen an occasional bird since."
Mr. William Clark of the Hudson's Bay Company, Winnipeg, informs me:
"The first place I remember having seen pigeons in Manitoba was at
White Horse Plains (St. François Xavier) in 1865, where they were very
numerous, breeding in the oak trees in that district. Two years after
this I went to Oak Point on Lake Manitoba, but do not remember the
birds there then nor since."
Mr. Charles A. Boultbee of Macgregor, Man., replies as follows:
"I have resided in Manitoba since 1872, and have taken pigeons as far
north as Fort Pelly in the fall of 1874, but know nothing of them
previously. In our district they usually made their appearance in the
fall and fed upon the grain. They continued fairly numerous until about
1882, at which time we had to drive them from the grain stocks, but
they then disappeared and only stragglers have been noted since."
There is no doubt that many other reports could have been secured, but,
as all seem to tend toward the one conclusion, I shall save time and
space by summarizing the information at hand.
Some months ago I made a statement in an article, written for local
interest, to the effect that Manitoba had never been the home of the
wild pigeon. By this I meant that, because of unfavorable breeding and
feeding conditions within the province, only the smallest percentage
of the enormous flocks recorded for the south and east could possibly
exist here. The records here collected support me in this contention
so far as that portion of the province west of the Red River is
concerned, but the record of Sir John Richardson tends to show that
favorable conditions must have existed immediately south of Lake
Winnipeg, through what he calls a low-lying district, and where we can
assume that the cranberry and blueberry were abundant, as they were
through the district subsequently reported by Mr. McLean to the east
and northeast of this district. There is no doubt that the difference
in the character of the country east of the Red River from that of
the west would present more favorable conditions for the birds, but
not in one case has it been shown that the birds nested in colonies
approaching the size of the famous eastern and southern roosts. Reports
seem rather to show that those which bred within the province were more
generally scattered over the country, at the same time being numerous
enough to permit the shooter and the netter to make a profitable
business of killing the birds.
All evidence seems to show that large numbers passed through the
province to and from a northern breeding ground, possibly that recorded
by Hutchins near Hudson's Bay and to the westward, and that they were
excessively numerous up to about 1870, when they began to decrease. As
to the latest authenticated records, I quote from notes in my pamphlet
on "Rare Bird Records:"
"The beautiful specimen of the Passenger Pigeon that I have been able
to secure for illustration is loaned me by Mr. Dan Smith of Winnipeg,
who shot it in St. Boniface, southeast of the cathedral, in the fall
of 1893; and, so far as I have been able to discover, it was the last
bird found in the vicinity of Winnipeg, while the only specimen in the
flesh which I was ever privileged to handle in Manitoba was killed at
Winnipegosis on April 10, 1896, and sent me to be mounted."
[Illustration: Photo by C. O. Whitman (University of Chicago)
October 16, 1906.
Mr. W. B. Mershon,
Dear Sir:--I am much chagrined over my carelessness in overlooking
your request for a photo of a young Passenger Pigeon. I had best of
intentions, but crowded work threw this out of mind. I should have
attended to it at first, had it been easy to get at the picture. I have
been away all summer and found things misplaced on my return. I fear it
is now too late, but send the picture to be used if you are still able
to do so. I shall be very much interested to see your book. I still
have two female pigeons and two hybrids between a former male pigeon
and the common Ring-dove. The hybrids are unfortunately infertile males.
Very truly,
C. O. Whitman.]
Since that time I have expended much effort in following up rumors of
the bird's presence in various districts with a view of locating a
breeding pair. Not only have I sought to secure a bird to mount, but
also to get a live pair, or the eggs while fresh, to assist in the
preservation of the pigeon in a partially domesticated state, since
the only specimens now living in captivity are those owned by Prof.
Whitman of the University of Chicago, who, in writing me, says: "My
stock seems to have come to a complete standstill, having raised no
young for the last four years. The weakness is due to long inbreeding,
as my birds are from a single pair captured about twenty-five years
ago in Wisconsin. I have long tried to secure new stock, but have been
unsuccessful. A single pair would enable me to save them, for they
breed well in confinement.
"I have crossed them with ring doves, and still have three hybrids,
but as these are infertile there is no hope of even preserving these
half-breeds alive. Of all the wild pigeons in the world the Passenger
Pigeon is my favorite. No other pigeon combines so many fine qualities
in form, color, strength and perfection of wing power."
I am enabled through the kindness of Prof. Whitman to exhibit a
photograph of one of his younger birds taken in his aviary at Chicago.
CHAPTER XVII
The Passenger Pigeon in Confinement
(_Ectopistes migratorius_)
From "The Auk," July, 1896.
In the _American Field_ of December 5, 1895, I noticed a short
note, stating that Mr. David Whittaker of Milwaukee, Wis., had in a
spacious inclosure a flock of fifty genuine wild pigeons. Being much
interested of late in this bird, I at once wrote to Mr. Whittaker,
asking for such information in detail regarding his birds as he could
give me, but, owing to absence from the city, he did not reply. Still
being anxious to learn something further regarding this interesting
subject, I recently wrote to a correspondent in Milwaukee, asking him
to investigate the matter. In due time I received his reply, stating
that he had seen the pigeons, but that the flock consisted of fifteen
instead of fifty birds, and inviting me to join him and spend a few
hours of rare pleasure.
On March 1, 1896, I visited Milwaukee, and made a careful inspection of
this beautiful flock. I am greatly indebted to Mr. Whittaker, through
whose courtesy we saw and heard so much of value and interest, not only
in regard to his pet birds, but also about his large experience with
the wild pigeon in its native haunts; for, being a keen observer of
nature, and having been a prospector for many years among the timber
and mining regions of Wisconsin, Michigan and Canada, his opportunities
for observation have been extensive. In the fall of 1888 Mr. Whittaker
received from a young Indian two pairs of pigeons, one of adults and
the other quite young. They were trapped near Lake Shawano, in Shawano
County in northeastern Wisconsin.
Shortly after being confined, one of the old birds scalped itself by
flying against the wire netting, and died; the other one escaped. The
young pair were, with much care and watching, successfully raised,
and from these the flock has increased to its present number, six
males and nine females. The inclosure, which is not large, is built
behind and adjoining the house, situated on a high bluff overlooking
Milwaukee River. It is built of wire netting and inclosed on the top
and two sides with glass. There is but slight protection from the cold,
and the pigeons thrive in zero weather as well as in summer. A few
branches and poles are used for roosting, and two shelves, about one
foot wide and partitioned off, though not inclosed, are where the nests
are built and the young are raised. It was several years before Mr.
Whittaker successfully raised the young, but, by patient experimenting
with various kinds of food, he has been rewarded. The destruction of
the nests and egg, at times by the female, more often by others of the
flock, and the killing of the young birds, after they leave the nest,
by the old males, explains in part the slow increase in the flock.
When the pigeons show signs of nesting, small twigs are thrown onto
the bottom of the inclosure; and, on the day of our visit, I was so
fortunate as to watch the operations of nest building. There were three
pairs actively engaged. The females remained on the shelf, and, at a
given signal which they only uttered for this purpose, the males would
select a twig or straw, and in one instance a feather, and fly up to
the nest, drop it and return to the ground while the females placed the
building material in position and then called for more.
In all of Mr. Whittaker's experience with this flock he has never known
of more than one egg being deposited. Audubon, in his article on the
Passenger Pigeon, says: "A curious change of habits has taken place
in England in those pigeons which I presented to the Earl of Kirby
in 1830, that nobleman having assured me that, ever since they began
breeding in his aviaries, they have laid only one egg." The eggs are
usually laid from the middle of February to the middle of September,
some females laying as many as seven or eight during the season, though
three or four is the average.
The period of incubation is fourteen days, almost to a day, and, if
the egg is not hatched in that time, the birds desert it. As in the
wild state, both parents assist in incubation, the females sitting
all night, and the males by day. As soon as the young are hatched
the parents are fed on earth worms, beetles, grubs, etc., which are
placed in a box of earth, from which they greedily feed, afterwards
nourishing the young, in the usual way, by disgorging the contents from
the crop. At times the earth in the inclosure is moistened with water
and a handful of worms thrown in, which soon find their way under the
surface. The pigeons are so fond of these tid-bits they will often
pick and scratch holes in their search, large enough to almost hide
themselves.
When the birds are sitting during cold weather, the egg is tucked up
under the feathers, as though to support the egg in its position. At
such times the pigeon rests on the side of the folded wing, instead
of squatting on the nest. During the first few days, after the young
is hatched, to guard against the cold, it is, like the egg, concealed
under the feathers of the abdomen, the head always pointing forward.
In this attitude, the parents, without changing the sitting position
or reclining on the side, feed the squab by arching the head and neck
down, and administering the food. The young leave the nest in about
fourteen days, and then feed on small seeds, and later, with the old
birds, subsist on grains, beech nuts, acorns, etc.
The adults usually commence to molt in September and are but a few
weeks in assuming their new dress, but the young in the first molt are
much longer. At the time of my visit the birds were all in perfect
plumage. The young in the downy state are a dark slate-color.
The pigeons are always timid, and ever on the alert when being watched,
and the observer must approach them cautiously to prevent a commotion.
They inherit the instincts of their race in a number of ways. On the
approach of a storm the old birds will arrange themselves side by
side on the perch, draw the head and neck down into the feathers, and
sit motionless for a time, then gradually resume an upright position,
spread the tail, stretch each wing in turn, and then, as at a given
signal, they spring from the perch and bring up against the wire
netting with their feet as though anxious to fly before the disturbing
elements. Mr. Whittaker has noticed this same trait while observing
pigeons in the woods.
It was with a peculiar sense of pleasure and satisfaction that I
witnessed and heard all the facts about this flock, inasmuch as but
few of us expect to again have such opportunities with this pigeon in
the wild state. It is to be hoped that, if Mr. Whittaker continues to
successfully increase these birds, he will dispose of a pair to some
zoölogical gardens; for what would be a more valuable and interesting
addition than an aviary of this rapidly diminishing species?
LETTERS OF COMMENT FROM CHIEF POKAGON.
Hartford, Mich., Dec. 17, 1896.
Ruthven Deane, Chicago, Ill.
Dear Sir:--Your article on wild pigeons (_O-me-me-oo_) received and
just read with much interest. I am now satisfied you are deeply
interested in those strange birds, or you would not have gone to
Milwaukee to see them. I would like to have Whittaker's full name and
address so I can learn the come-out of that little flock. You note
his flock stands zero weather. Many times in my life I have known
O-me-me-oo, while nesting, to be obliged to search for food in from
four to six inches of snow, and have seen the snow at such times
upturned and intermixed with forest leaves for miles and miles. They
would move out of the nesting grounds in vast columns, flying one over
the other. I have seen them at such times reminding me of a vast flood
of water rolling over a rocky bottom, sending the water in curved lines
upwards and falling farther down the stream.
I have seen them many times building nests by the thousand within
sight, both male and female assisting in building the nest. I have
counted the number of sticks used many times; they number from seventy
to one hundred and ten, sometimes so frail I have plainly seen the eggs
from the ground.
I visited a nesting north of Kilburn City, Wis., about twenty-five
years ago, and I there counted as high as forty nests in scrub oaks not
over twenty-five feet high; in many places I could pick the eggs out of
the nests, being not over five or six feet from the ground.
I stopped then with the Win-a-ba-go Indians, and was much interested in
seeing them play mog-i-cin. I had heard the fathers explain the game
when a boy, but never saw it before. I call it a gambling game. Certain
it is, when nesting in a wild state, the male goes out at break of day;
returning from eight to eleven he takes the nest; the hen then goes
out, returning from one to four, and takes the nest; then the male goes
out, returning, according to feed, between that time and night.
After the young leave their nests, I have always noticed that a few,
both males and females, stay with them. I have seen as many as a dozen
young ones assemble about a male, and, with drooping wings, utter the
plaintive begging notes to be fed, and never saw them misused at such
times by either gender. Certain it is, while feeding their young they
are frantic for salt. I have seen them pile on top of each other, about
salt springs, two or more deep. I wonder if your friend gives his
birds, while brooding, salt.
Hartford, Mich., Dec. 18, 1896.
Dear Sir:--Yours of December 17th at hand. It is indeed surprising to
me that your place of business is so close to old Fort Dearborn. In
writing you yesterday, I overlooked what you said about the Milwaukee
man's experience with his birds just hatching. I understand they were
young birds. Thirty-two years ago there was a big nesting between South
Haven and St. Joseph on Lake Michigan. About one week after the main
body commenced nesting, a new body of great size, covering hundreds of
acres, came and joined them. I never saw nests built so thick, high
and low. I found they were all young birds less than a year old, which
could be easily explained from their mottled coloring. To my surprise,
soon as nests were built, they commenced tearing them down--a few eggs
scattered about told some had laid; within three days they all left,
moving in a body up the lake shore north. I have had like facts told
me by others who have witnessed the same thing; and therefore conclude
that your friend's experience accurately portrays the habits of these
birds in their wild state.
University of Chicago,
May 30, 1904.
Dear Sir:--I have ten of the wild pigeons; they are from a single pair
obtained by Mr. Whittaker of Milwaukee about twenty years ago. Mr. W.
bred from this pair until he had a dozen or more. I obtained a few
pairs from him, and they bred fairly well for a few years, but lately
have failed to accomplish anything. This season a single egg was
obtained. It developed for about a week and then halted. The stock is
evidently weakened by inbreeding so long. I can give no information as
to time of disappearance. I have sought information far and near. Only
a few birds have been reported the last three years. One was reported
on pretty reliable grounds from Toronto last summer.
Sorry I can give you no satisfactory details.
Yours truly,
C. O. Whitman.
[Under date of June 6, 1905, Prof. Whitman of the University of Chicago
wrote to me that his flock had been reduced from ten to four since he
last wrote. He says that one pair were then beginning the maneuvers
preceding nesting, but he doubted very much if they would accomplish
anything.]
CHAPTER XVIII
Nesting Habits of the Passenger Pigeon
By Eugene Pericles (Dr. Morris Gibbs), from "The Oölogist, 1894."
There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of the younger readers of
_The Oölogist_ who have never seen a Passenger Pigeon alive. In fact,
there are many who have never seen a skin or stuffed specimen, for the
species is so rare now that very few of the younger collectors have had
an opportunity of shooting a bird. And of the present generation of
oölogists, the ones who have secured a set (one egg) are indeed very
few.
Many of the older ornithologists can remember when the birds
appeared among us in myriads each season, and were mercilessly and
inconsiderately trapped and shot whenever and wherever they appeared.
I could fill a book with the accounts of their butcheries, and could
easily cause astonishment in my readers by telling of the immense
flocks which were seen a quarter of a century ago. But wonderful as
these tales would appear, they would be as nothing compared to the
stories of the earlier writers on birds in America.
... Of course we know that the net and gun have been the principal
means of destruction, but it is almost fair to assert that even with
the net and gun under proper restrictions, the pigeon would still be
with us in hordes, both spring and autumn. For many years hunters
(butchers) used to shoot the birds regularly at their nesting places,
while the netters were also found near at hand.
I have seen many birds taken, by unsportsmanlike netters, for the
market during spring migrations, and the published accounts of the
destruction by netters is almost beyond belief. Doctor Kirtland states
that near Circleville, Ohio, in 1850, there were taken in a single net
in one day 1,285 live pigeons.
The Passenger Pigeon was in the habit of crossing the Ohio River by
March 1 in the spring migrations, and I have noted the birds several
times in Michigan in February. But this was not usually the case, for
the birds were not abundant generally before April 1, although no set
rule could be laid down regarding their appearance or departure either
in spring or fall. They usually came with a mighty rush. Sometimes they
did not appear, or, at least, only very sparingly. Their nesting sites
would remain the same for years if the birds were unmolested, but they
generally had to change every year or two, or as soon as the roost was
discovered by the despicable market netter.
Where the mighty numbers went to when they left for the south is not
accurately stated, and, of course, this will now never be known, but
they were found to continue in flocks in Virginia, Kentucky and even
Tennessee.
... In the latter part of April or early May the birds began nesting.
The nest building beginning as soon as the birds had selected a woods
for a rookery, the scene was one of great activity. Birds were flying
in every direction in search of twigs for their platform nests, and it
did seem that each pair was intent on securing materials at a distance
from the structure. Many twigs were dropped in flying, or at the nest,
and these were never reclaimed by their bearers, but were often picked
up by other birds from another part of the rookery. This peculiarity in
so many species of birds in nest building I could never understand.
It takes a pair of pigeons from four to six days to complete a nest,
and any basketmaker could do a hundred per cent. better job with the
same materials in a couple of hours. In the nest of the pigeon, man
could certainly give the birds points for their benefit, for it is one
of the most shiftless structures placed in trees that I have met with.
The nest is always composed of slender dead twigs, so far as I have
observed, or ever learned from others, and in comparison, though
smaller, much resembles some of the heron's structures. In some nests
I have observed the materials are so loosely put together that the egg
or young bird can be seen through the latticed bottom. In fact, it has
been my custom to always thus examine the nests before climbing the
tree.
The platform structures vary in diameter from six to twelve inches or
more, differing in size according to the length of the sticks, but
generally are about nine or ten inches across. An acquaintance of mine
had tamed some wild birds, which at last bred regularly in captivity.
These birds were well supplied with an abundance of material for their
nests and always selected in confinement such as described above, and
making a nest about nine inches in diameter.
The breeding places are generally found in oak woods, but the great
nesting sites in Michigan were often in timbered lands, I am informed.
The height of the nest varies. It may be as low as six feet or all of
sixty-five feet from the ground.
Passenger Pigeons are always gregarious when unmolested, and hundreds
of thousands sometimes breed in a neighborhood at one time. It is
impossible to say how many nests were the most found in one tree, but
there are authenticated instances of a hundred. One man, on whose
veracity I rely, informs me that he counted 110 nests in one tree in
Emmett County, the lower peninsula. Still this may not be correct, for
we all know how easy it is to be deceived in correctly counting and
keeping record of even the branches of a tree, and when these limbs are
occupied by nests it is certainly doubly difficult, and the tendency
to count the same nests twice is increased.
The first nests that I found were in large white oak trees at the edge
of a pond. The date was May 17, 1873. The nests were few in number and
only one nest in a tree. There was but a single egg in a nest; in fact
this is all I have found at any time. The last nest that I have met
with south of the forty-third parallel was forty feet up in a tamarack
tree in a swamp near the river, June 1, 1884. This nest was alone and
would not have been discovered had not the birds flown to it. I have
found several instances of pairs of pigeons building isolated nests,
and cannot help but think that if all birds had followed this custom
that the pigeons would still be with us in vast numbers.
As late as May 9, 1880, my lamented friend, the late C. W. Gunn, found
a rookery in a cedar woods in Cheboygan County. These nests contained
a single egg each, and he secured about fifty fresh eggs. He did not
think their number excessive, as the netters were killing the birds
in every direction. But now we can look upon such a trip almost as
devastation because the birds are so scarce.
In 1885 I met with the pigeon on Mackinac Island, and have found a few
isolated flocks in the Lower Peninsula since then, generally in the
fall, but it is safe to say that the birds will never again appear in
one-thousandth part of the number of former years.
The places where the birds are nesting are interesting spots to visit.
Both parents incubate and the scene is animated as the birds fly about
in all directions. However, as the bulk of the birds must fly to quite
a distance from an immense rookery to find food, it necessarily follows
that the main flocks arrive and depart evening and morning. Then the
crush is often terrific and the air is fairly alive with birds. The
rush of their thousands of wings makes a mighty noise like the sound of
a stiff breeze through the trees.
Often when the large flocks settle at the roost the birds crowd so
closely on the slender limbs that they bend down and sometimes crack,
and the sound of the dead branches falling from their weight adds an
additional likeness to a storm. Sometimes the returning birds will
settle on a limb which holds nests and then many eggs are dashed to the
ground, and beneath the trees of a rookery one may always find a lot of
smashed eggs.
Later in the season young birds may be seen perched all over the trees
or on the ground, while big squabs with pin-feathers on are seen in,
or rather on, the frail nests, or lying dead or injured on the ground.
The frightful destruction that is sure to accompany the nesting of a
rookery of Passenger Pigeons is bound to attract the observer's eye.
And we cannot but understand how it is that these unprolific birds with
many natural enemies, in addition to that unnatural enemy, man, fail
to increase. If the pigeon deposited ten to twenty eggs like the quail
the unequal battle of equal survival might be kept up. But even this is
to be doubted if the bird continues to nest in colonies.
Many ornithological writers have written that the wild pigeon lays two
eggs as a rule, but these men were evidently not accurate observers,
and probably took their records at second-hand. There is no doubt that
two eggs are quite often found in a nest, and sometimes these eggs
are both fresh, or else equally advanced in incubation. But these
instances, I think, are evidences alone that two females have deposited
in the same nest, a supposition which is not improbable with the
gregarious species.
That the wild pigeon may rear two or three young in a season, I do
not doubt, and an old trapper and observer has offered this theory to
explain the condition where there are found both egg and young in the
same nest, or squabs of widely varied ages. He asserts that when an egg
is about ready to hatch, a second egg was deposited in the nest, and
that the squab assisted in incubating the egg when the old birds were
both away for food, and that in time a third and last egg was laid, so
that three young were hatched each season, if the birds are unmolested.
This peculiarity may exist with the pigeon, but I can add nothing to
further it from my own observations, except to record the finding
of an egg in the nest with a half-grown bird--the only instance in
my experience. From watching the ways of some captive birds kept as
stool-pigeons, I am well satisfied that two young are not rarely
hatched at some weeks apart, and they do fairly well in confinement.
The young are fed by a process known as regurgitation, the partially
digested contents of the birds' crops being ejected into the mouths of
the squabs.
The position of the nest varies greatly. Often the nests are well
out on slender branches and in dangerous positions, considering the
shiftlessness of the structure. When a rookery is visited, nests may be
found in all manner of situation. I have found single nests built on
small twigs next the body of an oak tree, and at a height of only ten
feet, and again have seen nests forty feet up in thick tamaracks.
The eggs do not vary much in size or color. They are white, but without
the polish seen on the egg of the domestic pigeon. About one and
one-half by one inch is the regulation size.
By reference to old price lists of nearly a quarter of a century ago
I find that the eggs were then listed at twenty-five cents, while it
would be difficult to secure good specimens at present at six times the
figure.
CHAPTER XIX
Miscellaneous Notes
The earliest mention of the wild pigeon I have been able to find is the
following, taken from _Forest and Stream_, to which it was contributed
by F. C. Browne, Framingham, Mass. It is from an old print entitled,
"Two Voyages to New England, Made During the Years 1638-63," by John
Josselyn, Gent. Published in 1674. I am not so fortunate as to possess
an original copy. This extract is from the Boston reprint of 1865, and
is from the "Second Voyage" (1663), which has a full account of the
wild beasts, birds and fishes of the new settlement:
"The Pidgeons, of which there are millions of millions. I have seen a
flight of Pidgeons in the Spring, and at Michaelmas when they return
back to the South-ward, for four or five miles, that to my thinking had
neither beginning nor ending, length nor breadth, and so thick that
I could see no Sun. They join Nest to Nest and Tree to Tree by their
Nests many miles together in Pine-Trees. I have bought at Boston a
dozen Pidgeons ready pulled and garbidged for three pence. But of late
they are much diminished, the English taking them with Nets."
It will be noted that the wild pigeons began to be "much diminished"
even at that early date.
The following extract is from the journal of the voyage of Father
Gravier in the year 1700:
"Through the Country of the Illinois to the Mouth of the Mississippi."
Under date of October 7th he says:
"Below the mouth of the Ouabache (meaning the Wabash River), we saw
such a great quantity of wild pigeons that the air was darkened and
quite covered by them."
The journal of Alexander Henry, the younger, written in August, 1800,
states that large numbers of wild pigeons were seen and used for food
by his party. This was at a point on the Red River not far north of
what is now Grand Forks, N. D.
The Passenger Pigeon found a place in a book called "Quebec and Its
Environments; Being a Picturesque Guide to the Stranger." Printed
by Thomas Cary & Co., Freemasons' Hall, Buade Street, 1831. A rare
copy was found in the library of the late Charles Dean, having
been purchased by him while visiting Quebec in 1841. It is now in
the possession of Ruthven Deane of Chicago. I quote from this old
guide-book as follows:
[Illustration: PIGEON NET
Taken from an old etching]
"At one period of the year numerous and immense flights of pigeons
visit Canada, when the population make a furious war against them both
by guns and nets; they supply the inhabitants with a material part of
their subsistence, and are sold in the market at Quebec remarkably
cheap, often as low as a shilling per dozen, and sometimes even at a
less rate. It appears that the pigeon prefers the loftiest and most
leafless tree to settle on. In addition to the natural beauty of St.
Ann and its environs, the process by which the inhabitants take the
pigeons is worth remarking. Upon the loftiest tree, long bare poles are
slantingly fixed; small pieces of wood are placed transversely across
this pole, upon which the birds crowd; below, in ambush, the sportsman
with a long gun enfilades the whole length of the pole, and, when he
fires, few if any escape. Innumerable poles are prepared at St. Ann for
this purpose. The other method they have of taking them is by nets,
by which means they are enabled to preserve them alive, and kill them
occasionally for their own use or for the market, when it has ceased
to be glutted with them. Behind Madam Fontane's this sport may be seen
in perfection. The nets, which are very large, are placed at the end
of an avenue of trees (for it appears the pigeons choose an avenue
to fly down); opposite a large tree, upon erect poles two nets are
suspended, one facing the avenue, the other the tree; another is placed
over them, which is fixed at one end, and supported by pulleys and two
perpendicular poles at the opposite; a man is hid in a small covered
house under the tree, with a rope leading from the pulleys in his hand.
Directly the pigeons fly against the perpendicular nets, he pulls the
rope, when the top net immediately falls and incloses the whole flock;
by this process vast numbers are taken."
"Tanner's Narrative," a story (authentic) of thirty years among the
Indians, published in 1830, refers frequently to great numbers of
pigeons, and gives their range from the Kentucky, Big Miami and Ohio
Rivers to Lake Winnipeg, or "The Lake of Dirty Waters."
Mr. Osborn further adds: "Tanner was a United States Indian interpreter
at the Soo."
William Glazier made a trip to the headwaters of the Mississippi River
in 1881 and wrote a book entitled "Down the Mississippi River." In
three different places in this book he mentions seeing wild pigeons.
In one place he says that a small flock of pigeons dropped down in the
tops of some tall pines near him.
In Hayden's Survey Report, Interior Department, as given in Coues'
"Birds of the Northwest," 1874, it is mentioned that wild pigeons
were found on the Pacific coast, and Cooper reports them in the
Rocky Mountains. [High authority, but it must have referred to the
band-tailed pigeon.--W. B. M.]
From the foregoing chapters I have summarized the latest reports of the
presence of the wild pigeon in its former haunts. These instances have
been reported as follows:
N. W. Judy & Co., St. Louis, Mo., the largest dealers in poultry and
game in that section, said, in 1895, they had had no wild pigeons for
two years; the last they received were from Siloam Springs, Ark. This
would mean that they were on the market during the season of 1893.
Until 1890 frequent reports were recorded of pigeons seen singly, in
pairs and in small flocks.
In 1891 Mr. F. M. Woodruff, Assistant Curator of the Chicago Academy of
Sciences, secured a pair at Lake Forest, Ill.
A nest with two eggs and two birds were collected by C. B. Brown of
Chicago in the spring of 1893 at English Lake, Ind.
In September, 1893, three were reported in Lake County, Ill.
In April of the same year, a male pigeon was reported as having been
seen in Lincoln Park, Ill.
Mr. R. W. Stafford of Chicago, Ill., reported seeing a flock in the
latter part of September, 1894, at Marengo, Ill.
Mr. John L. Stockton, Highland Park, Ill., reported that while trout
fishing on the Little Oconto River, Wis., early in June, 1895, he saw a
flock of ten pigeons for several consecutive days near his camp.
A young female was killed at Lake Forest, Ill., in August, 1895.
In October, 1895, Dr. Ernest Copeland of Milwaukee killed one in Delta,
Northern Peninsula, Mich.
On December 17, 1896, C. N. Holden, Jr., while hunting quail in Oregon
County, Mo., observed a flock of about fifty birds.
Chief Pokagon reports there was a small nesting of pigeons near the
head waters of the Au Sable River in Michigan, during the spring of
1896.
A. Fugleburg of Oshkosh, Wis., reports that on the morning of August
14, 1897, he saw a flock of pigeons flying over Lake Winnebago from
Fisherman's Island to Stony Brook. This flock was followed by six more
flocks containing from thirty-five to eighty pigeons each. The same
observer reports that on September 2, 1897, a friend of his reported
having seen a flock of about twenty-five near Lake Butte des Mortes,
Wis.
W. F. Rightmire reports that while driving along the highway north
of Cook, Johnson County, Neb., August 18, 1897, he saw a flock of
seventy-five to one hundred birds; some feeding on the ground, others
perched in the trees.
A. B. Covert of Ann Arbor, President at one time of the Michigan
Ornithological Club, reports seeing stray birds during 1892 and 1894,
and states also that on October 1, 1898, he saw a flock of 200 and
watched them nearly all day.
T. E. Douglas of Grayling reports seeing a flock of ten near West
Branch, Mich., in 1895, and in 1900 he saw three on one of the branches
of the Au Sable River in Michigan.
In 1897 C. S. Osborn of Sault Ste Marie reported having seen a single
wild bird flying with the tame pigeons around the town.
In 1897 or 1898 C. E. Jennison of Bay City saw six or seven at Thunder
Bay Island near Alpena, Mich.
In 1900 Neal Brown of Wausau, Wis., killed one near Babcock, Wis., in
September.
George King of Otsego County, Mich., in 1900 saw a flock of one dozen
or more birds on the Black River, and he says he heard two "holler" in
1902, but was unable to find them. In May, 1905, he is certain he saw
six near Vanderbilt, Mich.
John Burroughs reports that a friend of his, Charles W. Benton, saw a
large flock of wild pigeons near Prattsville, Greene County, N. Y., in
April, 1906.
EARLY LEGISLATION TO SAVE THE PIGEON
Wild pigeons were used largely by trap-shooters for tournaments.
In 1881, 20,000 of them were killed in one of these trap-shooting
butcheries on Coney Island, N. Y. The following editorial protest
against this outrage appeared in _Forest and Stream_, July 14, 1881:
_Mr. Bergh's Anti-Pigeon Bill._--Just as we go to press we learn that
the Senate has passed the bill prepared by Mr. Henry Bergh prohibiting
the trap-shooting of pigeons. The bill awaits Governor Cornell's
signature before becoming a law. Its provisions are:
Section 1. Any person who shall keep or use any live pigeon, fowl,
or other bird or animal for the purpose of a target or to be shot at
either for amusement or as a test of skill in marksmanship, and any
person who shall shoot at any pigeon, fowl, or other bird or animal,
as aforesaid, or be a party to any such shooting of any pigeon, fowl
or other bird or animal; and any person who shall rent any building,
shed, room, yard, field, or other premises, or shall suffer or permit
the use of any building, shed, room, yard, field, or other premises for
the purpose of shooting any pigeon, fowl, or other bird or animal, as
aforesaid, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
Section 2. Nothing herein contained shall apply to the shooting of any
wild game in its wild state.
The bill is a direct and not wholly unexpected result of the Coney
Island pigeon-killing tournament of the New York State Association for
the Protection of Fish and Game. Had the sport of pigeon shooting been
confined to individual clubs of gentlemen testing their skill at the
traps, it is doubtful if the matter ever would have received, as it
would not have merited, public attention. But when a society, which
organized ostensibly for the protection of game, treats the public
to such a spectacle as that at Coney Island, neglects the matter with
which it should be concerned and devotes 20,000 pigeons brought from
their nesting ground to its wholesale slaughter, its members can hardly
look for any other public sentiment than exactly that feeling which has
been aroused. An afternoon's shoot at a few pigeons, and a ten days'
shoot at unlimited numbers of helpless birds--many of them squabs,
unable to fly, and others too exhausted to do so--are regarded by the
public as two very different things.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors were corrected.
One 'signature' of Ruthven Deane was modified from the printed version
to match the others.
Where quotations began and were not closed, a closing quotation mark
was placed at the end of that paragraph:
p. 155 "There are no wild pigeons in Iosco County...
p. 171 "In three years' time...
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