Passenger Pigeon

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{{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Passenger Pigeon | status = Conservation status: Extinct{{#if:{{{when|}}}| (1914) }} | image = Ectopistes migratoriusMCN2P28CA.jpg | image_width = 200px | image_caption = Male Passenger Pigeon--chromolithograph | regnum = Animalia | phylum = Chordata | classis = Aves | ordo = Columbiformes | familia = Columbidae | genus = Ectopistes | genus_authority = Swainson, 1827 | species = E. migratorius | binomial = Ectopistes migratorius | binomial_authority = (Linnaeus, 1766) }} The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once probably the most common bird in the world. It is estimated that there were as many as five billion passenger pigeons in the United States. They lived in enormous flocks—the largest of them a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds. It was hunted into extinction by humans.

The Passenger Pigeon was a very social bird. It lived in colonies with up to a hundred nests in a single tree, and stretching over hundreds of square miles. During summer, Passenger Pigeons lived throughout the part of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. In the winter, they lived in the southern US.

It was hunted for food, hog feed, as live targets for trap shooting and even sometimes as agricultural fertilizer, and shipped by the boxcar-load to the Eastern cities. In New York City in 1805, a brace (pair) of pigeons sold for two cents. Slaves and servants in 18th and 19th century America often saw no other meat. Commercial hunters harvested them in huge amounts for food, and most restaurants in the Eastern United States served pigeon to customers.

In the mid-1800s, it was noticeable that their numbers were dropping. The passenger pigeon only laid one egg at a time, so once numbers started to decline it would have taken time for them to start rising again. Almost all of the remaining quarter-million Passenger Pigeons were killed in a single day in 1896 by sport hunters, who knew they were shooting the last wild flock. The last wild Passenger Pigeon was shot by a 14-year-old boy in Ohio in March of 1900.

Other significant reasons for its extinction were deforestation (the birds relied on acorn and beech mast for breeding and shifted or occupied their breeding colonies in accordance with the food trees' mast year cycle), and probably social factors—the birds seemed to have initiated courtship and reproduction when they were gathered in large numbers; it was noted that small groups of Passenger Pigeons were notoriously difficult to get to breed successfully.

The last Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. She was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution and was skinned and mounted. She may be seen there today.

The musician John Herald has written a song about this species: "Martha (Last of the Passenger Pigeons)".

The most often cited example of coextinction is that of the Passenger Pigeon and its parasitic lice Columbicola extinctus and Campanulotes defectus. Recently, C. extinctus was rediscovered on the Band-tailed Pigeon, and C. defectus was found to be a likely case of misidentification of the existing Campanulotes flavus. However, even though the story of Passenger Pigeon lice has a happy ending (i.e., rediscovery), it is uncertain that other coextinctions of other parasites, even on the Passenger Pigeon, have not occurred.

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