The Passenger Pigeon
(_Columba Migratoria_)
From "American Ornithology," by Alexander Wilson
This remarkable bird merits a distinguished place in the annals of our
feathered tribes--a claim to which I shall endeavor to do justice;
and, though it would be impossible, in the bounds allotted to this
account, to relate all I have seen and heard of this species, yet no
circumstance shall be omitted with which I am acquainted (however
extraordinary some of these may appear) that may tend to illustrate its
history.
The wild pigeon of the United States inhabits a wide and extensive
region of North America, on this side of the Great Stony Mountains,
beyond which, to the westward, I have not heard of their being seen.
According to Mr. Hutchins, they abound in the country around Hudson's
Bay, where they usually remain as late as December, feeding, when the
ground is covered with snow, on the buds of the juniper. They spread
over the whole of Canada; were seen by Captain Lewis and his party near
the Great Falls of the Missouri, upwards of two thousand five hundred
miles from its mouth, reckoning the meanderings of the river; were also
met with in the interior of Louisiana by Colonel Pike; and extend their
range as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, occasionally visiting or
breeding in almost every quarter of the United States.
But the most remarkable characteristic of these birds is their
associating together, both in their migrations, and also during the
period of incubation, in such prodigious numbers, as almost to surpass
belief; and which has no parallel among any other of the feathered
tribes on the face of the earth, with which all naturalists are
acquainted. These migrations appear to be undertaken rather in quest
of food, than merely to avoid the cold of the climate, since we find
them lingering in the northern regions, around Hudson's Bay, so late
as December; and since their appearance is so casual and irregular,
sometimes not visiting certain districts for several years in any
considerable numbers, while at other times they are innumerable. I
have witnessed these migrations in the Genesee country, often in
Pennsylvania, and also in various parts of Virginia, with amazement;
but all that I had then seen of them were mere straggling parties,
when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld
in our Western forests, in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and the
Indiana territory. These fertile and extensive regions abound with
the nutritious beechnut, which constitutes the chief food of the
wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding
multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens
that, having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees, in an
extensive district, they discover another, at the distance perhaps of
sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning,
and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening,
to their place of general rendezvous, or as it is usually called, the
roosting place. These roosting places are always in the woods, and
sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented
one of these places for some time the appearance it exhibits is
surprising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with
their dung; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed; the surface
strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the
birds clustering one above another; and the trees themselves, for
thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an ax.
The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot; and
numerous places could be pointed out, where, for several years after,
scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance.
When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants, from
considerable distances, visit them in the night with guns, clubs, long
poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In
a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them.
By the Indians, a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an
important source of national profit and dependence for the season; and
all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion. The breeding
place differs from the former in its greater extent. In the western
countries above mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and
often extend, in nearly a straight line across the country for a great
way. Not far from Shelbyville, in the State of Kentucky, about five
years ago, there was one of these breeding places, which stretched
through the woods in nearly a north and south direction; was several
miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards of forty miles in extent!
In this tract almost every tree was furnished with nests, wherever
the branches could accommodate them. The pigeons made their first
appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether, with
their young, before the 29th of May.
As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests,
numerous parties of the inhabitants from all parts of the adjacent
country came with wagons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, many of them
accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for
several days at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that
the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and
that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without
bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees,
eggs, and young squab pigeons, which had been precipitated from above,
and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles
were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from
their nests at pleasure; while from twenty feet upwards to the tops
of the trees the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult
of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring
like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for
now the ax-men were at work cutting down those trees that seemed to be
most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner
that, in their descent, they might bring down several others; by which
means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred
squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost one mass
of fat. On some single trees upwards of one hundred nests were found,
each containing _one_ young only; a circumstance in the history of
this bird not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk
under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall of
large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes above,
and which, in their descent, often destroyed numbers of the birds
themselves; while the clothes of those engaged in traversing the woods
were completely covered with the excrements of the pigeons.
These circumstances were related to me by many of the most respectable
part of the community in that quarter, and were confirmed, in part, by
what I myself witnessed. I passed for several miles through this same
breeding place, where every tree was spotted with nests, the remains of
those above described. In many instances I counted upwards of ninety
nests on a single tree, but the pigeons had abandoned this place for
another, sixty or eighty miles off towards Green River, where they
were said at that time to be equally numerous. From the great numbers
that were constantly passing overhead to or from that quarter, I had
no doubt of the truth of this statement. The mast had been chiefly
consumed in Kentucky, and the pigeons, every morning a little before
sunrise, set out for the Indiana territory, the nearest part of which
was about sixty miles distant. Many of these returned before ten
o'clock, and the great body generally appeared on their return a little
after noon.
I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place
near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with my gun, on my
way to Frankfort, when, about one o'clock, the pigeons, which I had
observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to
return in such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed. Coming
to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a
more uninterrupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They
were flying with great steadiness and rapidity at a height beyond
gunshot in several strata deep, and so close together that could shot
have reached them one discharge could not have failed of bringing down
several individuals. From right to left, far as the eye could reach,
the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming everywhere
equally crowded. Curious to determine how long this appearance would
continue, I took out my watch to note the time, and sat down to,
observe them. It was then half-past one. I sat for more than an hour,
but, instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed
rather to increase both in numbers and rapidity, and, anxious to reach
Frankfort before night, I rose and went on. About four o'clock in
the afternoon I crossed the Kentucky River at the town of Frankfort,
at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous
and as extensive as ever. Long after this I observed them in large
bodies that continued to pass for six or eight minutes, and these
again were followed by other detached bodies, all moving in the same
southeast direction, till after six in the evening. The great breadth
of front which this mighty multitude preserved would seem to intimate
a corresponding breadth of their breeding place, which, by several
gentlemen who had lately passed through part of it, was stated to me
at several miles. It was said to be in Green County, and that the
young began to fly about the middle of March. On the seventeenth of
April, forty-nine miles beyond Danville, and not far from Green River,
I crossed this same breeding place, where the nests, for more than
three miles, spotted every tree; the leaves not being yet out I had a
fair prospect of them, and was really astonished at their numbers. A
few bodies of pigeons lingered yet in different parts of the woods, the
roaring of whose wings were heard in various quarters around me.
All accounts agree in stating that each nest contains only one young
squab. These are so extremely fat that the Indians, and many of the
whites, are accustomed to melt down the fat for domestic purposes as a
substitute for butter and lard. At the time they leave the nest they
are nearly as heavy as the old ones, but become much leaner after they
are turned out to shift for themselves.
It is universally asserted in the western countries that the pigeons,
though they have only one young at a time, breed thrice, and sometimes
four times in the same season; the circumstances already mentioned
render this highly probable. It is also worthy of observation that
this takes place during the period when acorns, beechnuts, etc., are
scattered about in the greatest abundance and mellowed by the frost.
But they are not confined to these alone; buckwheat, hempseed, Indian
corn, hollyberries, hackberries, huckleberries, and many others furnish
them with abundance at almost all seasons. The acorns of the live
oak are also eagerly sought after by these birds, and rice has been
frequently found in individuals killed many hundred miles to the
northward of the nearest rice plantation. The vast quantity of mast
which these multitudes consume is a serious loss to the bears, pigs,
squirrels, and other dependents on the fruits of the forest. I have
taken from the crop of a single wild pigeon a good handful of the
kernels of beechnuts, intermixed with acorns and chestnuts. To form a
rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these immense flocks
let us first attempt to calculate the numbers of that above mentioned,
as seen in passing between Frankfort and the Indiana territory. If we
suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe it
to have been much more), and that it moved at the rate of one mile in
a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its
whole length two hundred and forty miles. Again, supposing that each
square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons, the square
yards in the whole space, multiplied by three, would give two thousand
two hundred and thirty millions, two hundred and seventy-two thousand
pigeons!--an almost inconceivable multitude, and yet probably far below
the actual amount. Computing each of these to consume half a pint of
mast daily, the whole quantity at this rate would equal seventeen
millions, four hundred and twenty-four thousand bushels per day! Heaven
has wisely and graciously given to these birds rapidity of flight and
a disposition to range over vast uncultivated tracts of the earth,
otherwise they must have perished in the districts where they resided,
or devoured up the whole productions of agriculture, as well as those
of the forests.
A few observations on the mode of flight of these birds must not be
omitted. The appearance of large detached bodies of them in the air
and the various evolutions they display are strikingly picturesque and
interesting. In descending the Ohio by myself in the month of February
I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aërial manoeuvres. A
column, eight or ten miles in length, would appear from Kentucky,
high in air, steering across to Indiana. The leaders of this great
body would sometimes gradually vary their course until it formed a
large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing the
exact route of their predecessors. This would continue sometimes long
after both extremities were beyond the reach of sight, so that the
whole, with its glittery undulations, marked a space on the face of
the heavens resembling the windings of a vast and majestic river.
When this bend became very great the birds, as if sensible of the
unnecessary circuitous course they were taking, suddenly changed their
direction, so that what was in column before, became an immense front,
straightening all its indentures, until it swept the heavens in one
vast and infinitely extended line. Other lesser bodies also united with
each other as they happened to approach with such ease and elegance
of evolution, forming new figures, and varying these as they united
or separated, that I never was tired of contemplating them. Sometimes
a hawk would make a sweep on a particular part of the column from
a great height, when, almost as quick as lightning, that part shot
downwards out of the common track, but soon rising again, continued
advancing at the same height as before. This inflection was continued
by those behind, who, on arriving at this point, dived down, almost
perpendicularly, to a great depth, and rising, followed the exact path
of those that went before. As these vast bodies passed over the river
near me, the surface of the water, which was before smooth as glass,
appeared marked with innumerable dimples, occasioned by the dropping of
their dung, resembling the commencement of a shower of large drops of
rain or hail.
Happening to go ashore one charming afternoon, to purchase some milk at
a house that stood near the river, and while talking with the people
within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing
roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which, on the first moment, I
took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house and everything around
in destruction. The people, observing my surprise, coolly said: "It
is only the pigeons"; and on running out I beheld a flock, thirty or
forty yards in width, sweeping along very low between the house and the
mountain, or height, that formed the second bank of the river. These
continued passing for more than a quarter of an hour, and at length
varied their bearing so as to pass over the mountain, behind which they
disappeared before the rear came up.
In the Atlantic States, though they never appear in such unparalleled
multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous, and great havoc is
then made amongst them with the gun, the clap net, and various other
implements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that
the pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners
rise _en masse_, the clap nets are spread out on suitable situations,
commonly on an open height in an old buckwheat field; four or five
live pigeons, with their eyelids sewed up, are fastened on a movable
stick--a small hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the
distance of forty or fifty yards--by the pulling of a string the stick
on which the pigeons rest is alternately elevated and depressed, which
produces a fluttering of their wings similar to that of birds just
alighting; this being perceived by the passing flocks they descend with
great rapidity, and, finding corn, buckwheat, etc., strewed about,
begin to feed, and are instantly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by
the net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even thirty dozen have been
caught at one sweep. Meantime the air is darkened with large bodies
of them moving in various directions; the woods also swarm with them
in search of acorns; and the thundering of musketry is perpetual on
all sides from morning to night. Wagon loads of them are poured into
market, where they sell from fifty to twenty-five and even twelve cents
per dozen; and pigeons become the order of the day at dinner, breakfast
and supper, until the very name becomes sickening. When they have been
kept alive and fed for some time on corn and buckwheat their flesh
acquires great superiority; but, in their common state, they are dry
and blackish and far inferior to the full grown young ones or squabs.
The nest of the wild pigeon is formed of a few dry slender twigs,
carelessly put together, and with so little concavity that the young
one, when half grown, can easily be seen from below. The eggs are pure
white. Great numbers of hawks, and sometimes the bald eagle himself,
hover above those breeding places, and seize the old or the young
from the nest amidst the rising multitudes, and with the most daring
effrontery. The young, when beginning to fly, confine themselves to
the under part of the tall woods where there is no brush, and where
nuts and acorns are abundant, searching among the leaves for mast,
and appear like a prodigious torrent rolling through the woods, every
one striving to be in the front. Vast numbers of them are shot while
in this situation. A person told me that he once rode furiously into
one of these rolling multitudes and picked up thirteen pigeons which
had been trampled to death by his horse's feet. In a few minutes
they will beat the whole nuts from a tree with their wings, while
all is a scramble, both above and below, for the same. They have the
same cooing notes common to domestic pigeons, but much less of their
gesticulations. In some flocks you will find nothing but young ones,
which are easily distinguishable by their motley dress. In others they
will be mostly females, and again great multitudes of males with few
or no females. I cannot account for this in any other way than that,
during the time of incubation, the males are exclusively engaged in
procuring food, both for themselves and their mates, and the young,
being yet unable to undertake these extensive excursions, associate
together accordingly. But even in winter I know of several species
of birds who separate in this manner, particularly the red-winged
starling, among whom thousands of old males may be found with few or no
young or females along with them.
Stragglers from these immense armies settle in almost every part of
the country, particularly among the beech woods and in the pine and
hemlock woods of the eastern and northern parts of the continent. Mr.
Pennant informs us that they breed near Moose Fort, at Hudson's Bay, in
N. latitude 51 degrees, and I myself have seen the remains of a large
breeding place as far south as the country of the Choctaws, in latitude
32 degrees. In the former of these places they are said to remain until
December; from which circumstance it is evident that they are not
regular in their migrations like many other species, but rove about as
scarcity of food urges them. Every spring, however, as well as fall,
more or less of them are seen in the neighborhood of Philadelphia; but
it is only once in several years that they appear in such formidable
bodies; and this commonly when the snows are heavy to the north, the
winter here more than usually mild, and acorns, etc., abundant.
The passenger pigeon is sixteen inches long, and twenty-four inches in
extent; bill, black; nostril, covered by a high rounding protuberance;
eye, brilliant fiery orange; orbit, or space surrounding it, purplish
flesh-colored skin; head, upper part of the neck and chin, a fine
slate blue, lightest on the chin; throat, breast, and sides, as far as
the thighs, a reddish hazel; lower part of the neck and sides of the
same, resplendent changeable gold, green, and purplish crimson, the
last named most predominant; the ground color, slate; the plumage of
this part is of a peculiar structure, ragged at the ends; belly and
vent, white; lower part of the breast, fading into a pale vinaceous
red; thighs, the same; legs and feet, lake, seamed with white; back,
rump, and tail-coverts, dark slate, spotted on the shoulders with
a few scattered marks of black; the scapulars, tinged with brown;
greater coverts, light slate; primaries and secondaries, dull black,
the former tipped and edged with brownish white; tail, long, and
greatly cuneiform, all the feathers tapering towards the point, the
two middle ones plain deep black, the other five, on each side, hoary
white, lightest near the tips, deepening into bluish near the bases,
where each is crossed on the inner vane with a broad spot of black,
and nearer the root with another of ferruginous; primaries edged with
white; bastard wing, black.
The female is about half an inch shorter, and an inch less in extent;
breast, cinerous brown; upper part of the neck, inclining to ash; the
spot of changeable gold, green, and carmine, much less, and not so
brilliant; tail coverts, brownish slate; naked orbits, slate colored;
in all other respects like the male in color, but less vivid and more
tinged with brown; the eye not so brilliant an orange. In both the tail
has only twelve feathers.
[Illustration: PASSENGER PIGEON (_Columba Migratoria_)
Upper bird, female; lower, male
_Reproduced from the John J. Audubon Plate_]