The Passenger Pigeon

 

Once upon a time, North America was home to an estimated five to eight billion passenger pigeons.  They may have been the most numerous bird species in the world.  My father was in diapers when the last one died in 1914.  I was born in Michigan, where immense flocks had once thrived, prior to the invasion of farmers and loggers in the early 1800s.  Today, our culture has largely forgotten the saga of the passenger pigeons.  We still remember the war on bison, which is somehow seen as more heroic and dignified.

Lately, some genetic engineers have been talking about resurrecting the extinct birds.  Huh?  Would that make any sense?  Their natural habitat is long gone, and their return would not be appreciated by farmers, airline pilots, and many others.  Curiosity forced me to read two pigeon books.  It was an illuminating and disturbing experience. 

A. W. Schorger (1884-1972) wrote The Passenger Pigeon, which especially impressed me, because he was totally obsessed with this subject.  He devoted 15 years to research, exploring over ten thousand sources — books, journal articles, newspaper clippings.  He actively sought informants, and corresponded with many old-timers who had been near the front lines in the war on birds.  Passenger pigeons inhabited the eastern U.S., and southeastern Canada.  Wikipedia provides a good overview, and a map of their habitat [HERE]. 

Their primary source of food was mast — nuts, seeds, berries, and fruit produced by trees and woody brush.  The two most important foods were acorns and beechnuts.  Acorns were swallowed whole, and up to 17 could be stored in the bird’s crop.  By morning, they would be digested.  When winter grew old and tired, flocks migrated northward, as the retreating snow exposed a buried treasure of yummy nuts.

Pigeons also raided farms.  In the early days, at planting time, seeds were broadcast by hand (tossed on the ground surface).  Then, hungry flocks would zoom in and eagerly devour them all.  They loved corn and wheat, but buckwheat was their favorite.  Farmers sometimes burned thousands of acres of trees to discourage flocks from roosting close to their fields.  Later, they switched to sowing devices that covered the seeds with soil.

Flocks did not visit the same areas annually, because oak and beech forests did not reliably produce nuts year after year.  Birds might not return to the same place for 11 years.  Nut trees were smart.  By being unpredictable, hungry flocks could not become permanent parasites.  This enabled enough nuts to germinate, sprout, and maintain the survival of the species.  For pigeon flocks, life was a never ending search for free lunches.  They followed their stomachs to delicious locations. 

Observers calculated that enormous flocks zoomed across the sky at about 60 miles per hour (96 km/h).  They constantly scanned the land they flew over, in search of nourishing treasures.  Flocks were most vulnerable when on the ground, where they were prey for predators like wolves, foxes, lynxes, cougars, raccoons, and humans. 

They were far safer when perched in trees, or flying.  Airborne predators included eagles, hawks, and vultures.  A solitary pigeon would have been an easy lunch.  It was much safer to fly within a fast moving mob of a million friends.  Large flocks were not one solid mass, they separated into multiple tiers of birds, layers maybe spaced a foot apart (30 cm).  At high speed, these densely packed clusters moved fluidly in unison — swerving, diving, soaring, and bending.  This made predation difficult.

Large flocks of birds required large amounts of food, so they had to keep moving.  Nights were spent safely roosting in trees.  In the morning, smaller groups scattered across the land to forage.  They might travel 100 miles (160 km) before returning to roost for the night.  If one group discovered a location that contained abundant food, the larger flock would somehow learn this, and join the feast.  When a banquet concluded, the flock took wing and searched for a new place to roost for a while.  Passenger pigeons were nomads, no permanent address.

In Kentucky, observers described a huge roosting site 40 miles (64 km) long, and 3 miles wide.  When large flocks roosted, birds covered every limb, sometimes several layers deep, standing on the backs of others.  Their weight snapped off large limbs.  Sometimes entire trees fell over.  Some forests looked like a tornado had passed through — thousands of acres of dead trees.

Descriptions of migrating flocks, in unbelievable numbers, strain the imagination.  But millions of people saw them.  Flocks often stretched as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon.  They might block out the sun for several days.  People could hear the approach of flock that was still 4 miles (6.4 km) away.  The sound of a million wings was deafening, “like the roar of distant thunder.”  John James Audubon, naturalist and artist, calculated that one flock had more than a billion birds.  Someone else watched a flock in Kentucky that sped across the sky for 14 hours.  It was a mile wide and more than 300 miles (483 km) long.  The flock continued on the following day. 

Roosting sites were inhabited until food in an area became scarce, then the flock moved on.  Nesting sites required a longer stay, so they were located where food resources were especially abundant.  They were close to water, sheltered from the wind, and often on islands.  A vital process was performed at nesting sites, reproduction.  Nests were built in trees, eggs laid, and squabs (chicks) hatched.  Flocks nested at least once a year, and most observers reported that just one egg was laid per nest. 

Nesting sites varied in size, but large colonies were typical.  There was safety in numbers.  Pigeon cities could have a hundred million birds or more.  They might inhabit an area ten miles long and three miles wide (16 by 4.8 km).  Tree limbs were crowded with nests.  If a winter storm blew in, or if hunters began shooting, the entire colony might suddenly abandon their nests and squabs.

Nesting was synchronized.  Colonies gathered and nests were built.  Almost all of the eggs were laid on about the same day.  Parents took turns keeping the squabs warm under wing, while the other parent brought back food.  Squabs grew rapidly, remaining in the nest for 13 to 15 days.  At this point, parents brought squabs their last meal, and then departed from the nesting area in a great mass.  It was up to the squabs to learn how to fly.  They were fairly helpless, and predators were happy to eat them.  Their bodies were loaded with fat. 

Native Americans were grateful for the pigeons.  They caught birds with nets.  Nesting sites were primary locations for getting birds.  They used poles to knock squabs from their nests.  Nesting trees were sometimes cut down to access the numerous squabs.  Tribes collected the fat from squabs, stored it, and used it like butter.  Pigeons played starring roles in tribal myths and legends.  There were taboos against prematurely disturbing nesting sites, and scaring away the adults before the young had hatched. 

Early explorers (1534) reported large passenger pigeon populations.  They were the most common birds on Manhattan Island in the 1620s.  In the 1800s, the tide changed.  Settlers were encouraged to conquer and demolish the wild frontier.  In 1849, free land was given to folks who drained wetlands (prime nesting habitat).  New telegraph systems enabled social networking, announcing the location of nesting sites.  New railroads enabled industrial scale pigeon hunting.  Millions of birds could be quickly shipped from rural areas to big cities.  Sometimes tons of squabs were dumped in the river due to spoilage.  Unsold birds were fed to pigs.

Hunters used ducking guns with six foot barrels, double barrel shotguns, and large blunderbusses.  A single shot might kill 132.  A Wisconsin hunter shot 1,458 birds in one day.  Lads skilled with nets could capture up to 6,000 birds per day.  Many birds were killed for their feathers alone, which were used for bedding.

By the 1870s, bird numbers were obviously declining.  Some folks suggested conservation efforts, but few really gave a <bleep>.  Money makes civilized people crazy, and an ambitious lad could make big money selling squabs for 30¢ a dozen.  The last wild flocks were gone by 1889.  They had been massacred far faster than they could reproduce.  Schorger sighed, “Persecution was unremitting until the last wild bird disappeared.” 

Over and over again, natural history teaches us that genetic evolution works slowly and beautifully.  When the species in an ecosystem coevolve over the course of thousands of years, the journey is far more likely to develop a sense of balance and harmony.  Over and over again, reality teaches us that a society obsessed with wealth and status is a fast path to a dead end.  Why don’t schools teach this?  How can we see where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been?

Schorger, Arlie William, The Passenger Pigeon, 1955, Reprint, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1973.

Greenberg, Joel, A Feathered River Across the Sky, Bloomsbury, New York, 2014.  

American Serengeti





Once upon a time, the Great Plains of the western U.S. resembled the Serengeti of Africa, a vast prairie inhabited by abundant wildlife.  Each year, during the wet season, grasslands produce far more new biomass than forests do, per unit of land.  The greenery converts sunlight into carbohydrates, nutrients necessary for the existence of animal life in the ecosystem.  Thus, the usually sunny plains are a vast array of solar collectors that generate food for the vast array of animal life.  Bison meat is highly concentrated solar energy.

Dan Flores is an environmental historian, and he specializes in Big History, which focuses on entire ecosystems, and regards humans as just one group of the many actors on the stage.  Each species of plant and animal plays a role in the living drama.  In this book, American Serengeti, Flores described the drama of the Great Plains from a perspective that spanned millions of years, going back long before humans.  It highlights the sagas of six species. 

The notion of “climax state” asserts that ecosystems can achieve enduring balance and stability.  Flores doesn’t believe in climax states.  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors succeeded in existing for a very long time in a low impact manner.  The fact that agriculture emerged independently in multiple locations indicates that the process could sometimes wobble out of balance, and whirl into ecological hurricanes.  We gradually expanded into new ecosystems, improved hunting methods, grew in numbers, and began bumping into limits.

Before Siberian hunters discovered America, the Great Plains were home to many species of large mammals, none of which had evolved adaptations for living near packs of aggressive primates with spears, dogs, and fire.  Between 8,000 and 13,000 years ago, 32 genera and at least 50 species went extinct.  Losers included camels, mammoths, giant ground sloths, horses, steppe lions, dire wolves, long-toothed cats, long-legged hyenas, giant long-horned bison, and many others.  In addition to overhunting, it’s likely that intense climate change also played a role in the surge of megafauna extinctions. 

Eventually, the species that escaped extinction managed to adapt to the humans, and share the plains for several thousand years.  Then, two centuries ago, powerful primate hurricanes whirled in from Europe and launched a devastating war on the Great Plains ecosystem.  Flores says that today, “you feel as if you’re standing at the end of an immense line of dominos…” 

Pronghorn antelopes evolved from ancestors that emerged 25 million years ago.  They are the fastest mammals on the plains.  Males can zoom along at 55 mph (88 km/h), and females at 65 to 70 mph (104 to 112 km/h).  Pronghorns can run at 90 percent of their top speed for two miles (3.2 km).  They can easily outrun today’s wolves and coyotes, only their fawns are vulnerable to predation.

Pronghorns evolved traits to evade a number of speedy predators, all of which blinked out at least 10,000 years ago.  They are very well adapted to a reality that no longer exists.  Unfortunately, they are unable to leap fences, a fact that has benefitted their exterminators.  By 1900, they had declined from at least 15 million to 13,000.  Today, there are 700,000.

The coyote story is fascinating.  Indians had great respect for them.  Coyotes were often tricksters in their folktales — exceptionally clever, but their cleverness often backfired.  Along with wolves and jackals, coyotes evolved in America five million years ago.  By one million years ago, some wolves and jackals migrated west into Eurasia.  Gray wolves returned to America 20,000 years ago, and began bumping into coyotes, leading to friction.  Evolution solved this problem by making wolves larger, and coyotes smaller, adjusting them for different niches.

American settlers hated coyotes, leading to decades of extermination campaigns.  By inserting strychnine pellets into rotting carcasses, one lad could kill 350 coyotes in ten days — far easier than shooting them.  Many millions have been killed, and the U.S. continues to kill 500,000 every year.  Efforts at extermination almost always backfire.  Apparently it’s impossible to permanently eliminate them.

Coyotes, like humans, have fission-fusion families — they sometimes work in packs, and other times as individuals.  This versatility promoted their survival.  Wolves are solely pack hunters, an unfortunate limitation.  Coyotes are fertile at one year old, and their average litters have 5.7 pups.  But when food is abundant, or their numbers are dwindling, they have larger litters.  Persecution also inspires them to migrate and colonize new lands.  They now range from Alaska to Panama, in all Canadian provinces, and all U.S. states except Hawaii.  They’ve learned how to thrive in cities.

Horses, pronghorns, wolves, and coyotes originated in America.  The ancestors of horses emerged 57 million years ago.  At some point, the horse family discovered Asia, and spread to Europe and Africa.  In North America, they were extinct by 10,000 years ago.  Spanish settlers later brought them to New Mexico, where many escaped in 1680.  They fled into an ecosystem for which evolution had already fine-tuned them, and where extinction had eliminated their primary predators.  Paradise!

Given these conditions, they were tremendously successful.  One observer noted, “As far as the eye could extend, nothing over the dead level prairie was visible except a dense mass of horses, and the trampling of their hooves sounded like the road of the surf on a rocky coast.”

For Indians, horses provided huge benefits — with hunting, hauling, raiding, and rustling.  They gained wealth by capturing wild horses and selling them at white trading centers.  A number of tribes abandoned agriculture, moved to the plains, and became bison hunters.  Comanches were the dominant tribe.  They were eager to trade horses for cool stuff, fully intending to steal their horses back from the palefaces at the first opportunity.

Today, wild horses baffle Americans.  They compete for forage with livestock that have market value.  Americans are unwilling to consume organic, grass fed, high protein, low fat horse meat — ordinary food in countries including Mexico, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Poland, and China.  In the 1800s, pompous Anglo-Americans sneered at the disgusting meat that only low class immigrants would eat.  Thus, a cultural taboo evolved.  Countless horses ended up in dog food cans.  Today, instead of raising native animals fine-tuned for the Great Plains, like horses and bison, we continue to raise animals fine-turned for Europe — a region having a mild, moist climate, and a blend of vegetation optimal for raising cattle and sheep.

Grizzly bears were hammered in the last two centuries.  Settlers detested big strong animals that loved having lunch dates with settlers.  Five hundred years ago, the entire western half of the U.S. was grizzly country, home to 100,000 bears.  Travelers sometimes saw 30 or 40 in a day.  By 1900, only a few hundred remained, hiding in the mountains.  Today, there are zero bears on the plains, and maybe 1,000 close to national parks.

Giant long-horned bison from Eurasia discovered America about 800,000 years ago (today’s bison are dwarfed).  Both bison and pronghorns survived the megafauna extinctions.  Since then, both have coevolved.  Bison prefer to eat grasses, which encourages the growth of plants that pronghorns like.  Pronghorns prefer flowering plants and shrubs, shifting the advantage back to grasses.  They don’t compete for the same grub.

Following the megafauna extinctions, bison had few grazing competitors or predators, so their numbers swelled to maybe 20 to 30 million (others say 60).  Once upon a time, bison ranged from northwest Canada to Florida.  Sometimes a single herd took more than a week to pass.  “The buffalo was the essence of ecological adaptation to North America, perfectly suited to the grasslands.”  They survived drastic climate changes, and 100 centuries of human hunters.  Sadly, it took less than 100 years to reduce them to 1,073 animals by 1886.  They stood in the path of progress and civilization.

Before Indians got horses, hunting was far more difficult.  Fewer bison were taken, so scarcity was not often experienced.  Hunting did not seem to diminish their numbers, and many believed that the animals magically regenerated, the dead were renewed.  “The horse cast a dark shadow over the bison herds… no Indian could see that shadow.”  Then came the crazy Americans, for whom bison were walking gold pieces, which the magic of the marketplace deposited into the piggy bank.

The ancestors of wolves, coyotes, and dogs originated in America five million years ago.  Some wolves migrated into Asia, and spread to Europe and Africa.  Following the extinction spasm, a number of large predators left the stage, leaving a huge niche for both bison and wolves.  Wolves almost acted like shepherds to herds of bison and other large grazers.  They ate maybe four of every ten bison calves.  When horses were reintroduced, yummy colts were added to the menu.

As settlers, market hunters, and sportsmen moved west, they killed lots of game.  Wolves feasted on the banquet of leftovers.  The bison extermination campaign raged from the 1860s to 1880s.  As bison were depleted, market hunters turned to elk, pronghorns, bighorn sheep, and deer.  Countless millions of animals were slaughtered.  Then, the generous settlers began raising delicious wolf chow, dimwitted critters called cattle and sheep.  Enjoying 10,000 years of fine dining, wolves may have expanded up to 1.5 million animals.  Around 1850, America declared war on wild predators.  Wolves were shot, roped, gassed, stomped, strangled, poisoned, and trapped.  By 1923, wolves had been erased from the Great Plains.

The book closes with a discussion of recent efforts to rewild the west — remove the fences, and let bison, wolves, and others return to wild freedom.  A few projects are underway, and others are being considered.  For decades, Americans have been migrating out of the plains.  The Dust Bowl of the 1930s, nuked many farms.  Then came irrigation, extracting fossil water from the Ogallala Aquifer — an adventure in water mining that’s beginning to sing its death song.  Dust is returning.  Climate change may be the settlers’ last stand.  It’s expected to make the plains hotter and drier, maybe a desert.

“Before it was de-buffaloed, de-wolved, and de-grassed, the nineteenth-century Great Plains was one of the marvels of the world,” writes Flores.  “It took 13,000 years but the one, singular charismatic megafauna that walked upright did finally succeed in vanquishing, indeed nearly obliterating, all the others and bending the plains to its will.”  His book is fascinating, easy to read, short, and sad — an illuminating and uncomfortable look in the mirror.

Flores, Dan, American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2016.

See my review of Flores’ earlier book, The Natural West, HERE.  YouTube has some Flores videos.  In 2010, National Geographic released a gorgeous and informative video titled American Serengeti.