The passenger pigeon had the most spectacular demise, plummeting from a population of billions to a population of zero in less than 100 years. Passenger pigeons used to flock by the billions. The passenger pigeon was the most common bird in North America. Passenger pigeons traversed the continent in enormous flocks that literally blocked out the sun and stretched for dozens (or even hundreds) of miles.
Nearly everyone in North America ate passenger pigeons.
Passenger pigeons were a crucial source of food for inland colonists who might
have starved to death otherwise.
Passenger pigeons were hunted with the aid of 'stool pigeons'.
Passenger pigeons were shipped East in railroad cars by the ton.
Passenger pigeons were shot by the tens of millions. Passenger pigeon flocks and nesting grounds were so dense that even an incompetent hunter could kill dozens of birds with a single shotgun blast.
Passenger pigeons laid only one egg at a time in closely packed nests atop the dense forests of the northern United States and Canada. Passenger pigeon breeding grounds were referred to as "cities."
Passenger pigeons nourished their newborn hatchlings with crop milk, a cheese-like secretion that oozes out of the gullets of both parents. Passenger pigeons fed their young with crop milk for three or four days. Passenger pigeons abandoned the hatchlings a week or so later, at which point the newborn birds had to figure out how to leave the nest and scavenge for their own food.
Deforestation deprived passenger pigeons of their accustomed nesting grounds, and when these birds ate the crops planted on cleared land, they were often mowed down by angry farmers.
People tried to save the passenger pigeon before it went extinct. People thought "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 today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them."
There was nothing anyone could do to save the passenger pigeon. The last reliable sighting of a wild passenger pigeon was in 1900, in Ohio. The last passenger pigeon in captivity – Martha – died on September 1, 1914.
It may be possible to resurrect the passenger pigeon.
No one has taken on this challenging task.
