The final flight of the Passenger Pigeon

Mounted male passenger pigeon at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Photo by James St. John. Creative Commons by 2.0.

By P.G. Misty Sheehan

When I can shoot my rifle clear
 At pigeons in the skies
 I’ll bid farewell to pork and beef
 And live on pigeon pies.
           -From the Mason County Record, March 1868

When Europeans first came to Michigan in the 1600s, passenger pigeons (a.k.a. wild pigeons) were the most common bird in the region, if not the most common in the world, according to the American Bird Conservancy.  In 1914, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and she was 29 years old.

Barry Yeoman in Audubon Magazine relates that in 1850 Potawatomi Chief Simon Pokagon, while camping on the headwaters of the Manistee River, said, “As I listened more intently, I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses [I heard} it was distant thunder; … While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving towards me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons.”

John Jacob Audubon suggested that there could be 1.1 billion of the birds in one flight he witnessed. Several sources put their total numbers at 3-4 billion. In North America, their home was Eastern and Midwestern U.S. and Canada.

According to Project Passenger Pigeon, many bodies of water in Michigan were “likely” named for them, including Pigeon Lake in Oceana County and Pigeon Lake in Benzie County. In her book, “Memorial of a Half Century”, Bela Hubbard described an enormous nesting of passenger pigeons in Benzie County in 1874.

After the snow melted, the slate-blue birds came south and mated, usually resulting in one egg per female. They nested in Michigan forests, most notably along the lakeshore. Beech, maple, and hemlock trees were crammed with so many nests that branches would snap off and tree trunks fall. A diary from Crystal Lake states that the writer could take a stick to low hung branches and get enough birds for his family’s dinner.  For many years, the flocks were thought inexhaustible.

In September, passenger pigeons filled farmers’ fields with their numbers and filled their bird bellies with grain. Capturing pigeons was added to hunting and fishing as a side means for farmers. A tale from the Ludington area, by Rose Hawley, relates how the pigeons were caught. 

First, a space on the ground, about 15 feet by 30 feet, was cleared between the nesting and feeding areas, and a net was put down. (It was illegal to place a net near nesting areas.) Next, the ground was baited with grain and salt. The hunter hid in a blind made of tree branches, called a “bough house.”  A stool (live decoy) pigeon was tied to a string that was tied to a springboard. The board was bounced up and down to make the stool pigeon flap its wings and entice others in the flock. (Hunters spent time looking for a good stool pigeon.) When the net was judged full, it was drawn closed, and the birds trapped.

A good catch was 6-10 birds; at market each brought about $2.50, a significant amount at the time.

The trapped birds were killed by pinching their necks with a pair of tweezers. They were placed in barrels with ice. With the development of the railroad after the Civil War, the birds could be transported to Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston for pigeon pies or to be used by shooting clubs for targets.

The invention and spread of the telegraph also helped lead to the bird’s demise. Reports of their whereabouts and numbers could be quickly communicated.

As stated on the Project Passenger Pigeon website: “Michigan became the first and only state or province to ban all killing of the passenger pigeon. Unfortunately, the law was passed in 1898, way too late to save the bird but (it was) a significant moment in passenger pigeon history none the less.”

Trapshooting and commercial slaughtering killed the birds off too rapidly to restore the flocks.

“In 1878, the ‘grand nesting’ at Petoskey (said to be 40 miles long and 3-10 miles wide) resulted in an estimated 1,500,000 dead birds for the summer besides 80,352 living birds sent in coops for the sport shooting market.” (Project Passenger Pigeon)

By 1880, the nesting sites became smaller and a site along the Platte River saw the last significant nesting. In the 1890s wild flock sizes had diminished to dozens. Then they disappeared totally. Various theories about their demise, besides the loss from hunting, have surfaced. One maintains that the destruction of nesting habitat in Michigan, due to lumbering, also had a major impact on the bird’s declining numbers, but none of the other theories can explain fully the bird’s extinction. 

People have written elegies about the pigeon. Simon Pokagon (1830-1899) of the Potawatomies, said, “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.”

Author and conservationist Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) wrote, “Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons, trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind.  But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.”

The passenger pigeon, like the forests of massive pine trees that once covered Michigan, are gone forever.

See a Michigan State Historical Marker about the passenger pigeon at Oden State Fish Hatchery, north of Petoskey, on U.S. Highway 31.

P.G. Misty Sheehan is a retired professor of humanities and former executive director of the Benzie Area Historical Society Museum. She lives near the lakeshore and enjoys seeing and hearing birds.

Read more stories by P.G. Misty Sheehan HERE.