The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here to-day, and elsewhere to-morrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced.
Among the trees the air pools still and warm, though above me I can see the wind swaying the high crowns of the white oak trees. Among their leaves, still glossy green, I can see the abundant, small round shapes of acorns, and once in a while I hear one drop into the leaf litter, sheared off by wind or more likely the tooth work of a chipmunk or gray squirrel. I wish I’d brought my hat; being hit by an acorn falling 50 feet is an unfortunately memorable experience.
The passenger pigeon winged its way into Western history on July 1, 1534, when Jacques Cartier, nosing along the coast of Prince Edward Island, saw what he called an “infinite number” of the birds flying by. That is roughly what Americans were to see for the next three and a half centuries; by the time they realized that the pigeon populations were in fact not infinite, never had been, never could be, it was already too late to save them. The passenger pigeons were neither the first nor the only “inexhaustable” resource to be decimated in North America–think of the great auk, the Atlantic right whale, the bison, the old-growth hardwood forests of the Ohio Valley, the towering white pines of the North Woods–but their disappearance made the greatest impression on the greatest number of people. For several generations, as settlers moved into the eastern deciduous forests, the pigeons were not just part of their lives, but the most stunning of all the biological spectacles on a continent rife with wonders.
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“When alighted, they are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the fallen mast,” wrote Audubon. “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.
Pigeons were taken both for immediate local consumption and for shipment to metropolitan markets. As late as 1880 a dozen cleaned adult pigeons could be bought for about $1.50 in Chicago; squabs were a trifle more expensive. It was possible to trap thousands of pigeons a day near a large nesting. Trappers could make $500 during four weeks of nesting–enough money that there was no need to work for the rest of the year. It’s no wonder that when voices were raised against the slaughter, and even when laws were passed prohibiting the taking of pigeons in or near nesting areas, they were almost universally ignored.
I can imagine, looking at what these two have become, how the man who shot them–it almost certainly was a man, in those days–felt justified in doing so. In the days before the Endangered Species Act, the top priority often was killing, not saving, the last individuals of a species for museum specimens or to confirm the sighting. I can imagine how the pigeons flew in, one last time, just two this time instead of multitudes, but still they flew quickly out of nowhere, strong fliers, and the sun reflected in many colors from the male’s neck. Had the gunner not shot then that vision of passing beauty would have been gone forever, never to return, and so he shot, more out of love than greed, and met his mark, and the birds fell; and though the lifeless bodies lost their luster, they were at least a slight reminder of what had been. I think of those pigeons spiraling downward whenever I see a bird or butterfly or flower that is so beautiful that I want to hold on to it for good, and though I know, I know, that the moment cannot be preserved, because it contains the frangible beauty of things that pass, sometimes I pick the flower, or try to catch the butterfly by its wings, and later when I look at it again it is my sorrow that hints at what I saw before.
