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Thanks Zapper. Hotlink to the book online if anyone cares to bookmark it for reading...Geo

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The demise of the PP is an interesting and tragic thing. It was not over-hunting that did it, as many assume. That ended up bieng a minor part of it.It was mostly loss of nesting habitat and their inability to adapt to a changing world as man entered their area. They would migrate in such tremendous numbers that they were like a flock of feather locust.

In part it was the PP themselves who did it to themselves. Their numbers were so great, almost beyond our comprehension, that they were a flying plague where ever they went or roosted. Their food consumption needs required them to fly miles every day when on the nest with young. They would strip the local area of all food within days and need to fly further and further out each day in search of food. Then their parenting skill were so different than a caring nurturing system. In the end they abandoned their young shortly before they would be able to fly. Perhaps the need to find food just over whelmed the impulse to nurture the young. Survival of the fittest PP only. After use the roost areas would take years to fully recover. It was noted on one roost area there was not a single stick or twig found on the ground in the entire forest as every last one of them had been used to build nest. The bird droppings were quite thick and could cause a die off of all vegetation in many areas until it would decay over time.

It is all so sad. What made them unique also contributed to their very demise. High numbers, not millions in a flock but tens of millions in just one flock, gave them protection against predators in the roost and when nesting, but also were such a negative impact on the environment that they were a plague where every they went. A few bad nesting years, weather and crop changes, loss of the virgin forest and the clearing of that same forest all had a part of their demise. Very sad indeed.

It's so much easier just to blame it on the "Hunter", particular if you are anti hunting or anti gun. Much the same situation existed with the "Buffalo" (Bison). The breed has of course survived & is around in good numbers. Of course modern habitat will never as long as it exists allow them to reach numbers anywhere close to when William Cody was using them to feed the RR workers.

If I remember correctly Cyril Adams said in his book on pigeon shooting, that about 10acres a day of hardwood forest was cut, for 60 YEARS.

That's 219,000 acres. Not a lot, especially by passenger pigeon range standards. One plantation adjoining me is almost one third that size.

As KY Jon alluded to, it was a "perfect storm" of monumental proportions that was the culmination of so many factors. Still sad to me. Sad that we cannot see those flocks blacken the shy for many hours at the time.

SRH

I don't think anyone blames the sportsman hunters for the extinction, but market hunting sure didn't help in the conservation. From what I've read, they weren't shot for sport. As for humans impacting game populations, the indiscriminate shooting of wild turkeys over bait for table fare regardless of sex or age year-round was the biggest reason for the need for the successful reintroduction through stocking cannon netted birds in areas that hadn't held a wild turkey in generations, and in some areas, outside their historic range. Gil

There is much to appreciate about the shooting of Mourning doves. They have many attributes that make them a good sport species.

I find the end of the PP and the rise of the RG in literature a peculiar, yet fascinating simultaneous coincidence of events.

All you need to do is couple hard coal mining with the deforestation of the east all along every railroad track (to feed eastern cities with fuel for heat and cooking), and you get a death of the PP and a rise of the RG. Weird parallels.

That's kinda what happened here with the decline of quail and the boom in turkeys. Personally, if it had to be one or the other I'd rather have the quail back. But, if wishes were horses poor beggars could ride.

SRH

A quick read of some of the literature concerning the cause or causes of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon provides more questions than answers. But it appears far too simplistic to confidently say that the cause was either over-hunting or habitat loss.

Some sources say that the massive population of billions of birds evolved slowly and that the survival of the species relied on this huge population density. Yet other sources say that the population numbers rose and fell dramatically numerous time during their time on this earth. In some articles, both points are made. They say that the species' survival depended upon huge numbers over the entire Eastern U.S., but then went on to say that those numbers crashed and rose numerous times since the last Ice Age. How can both statements be true?

Other sources say there was surprisingly little genetic diversity in such a huge population, yet over-hunting is blamed for the crash and extinction rather than other factors such as some unrecognized malady or disease. The last surviving bird lived something like 29 years and never produced a single egg. Did hunting have anything to do with that? It sounds as if a hell of a lot of them stopped producing eggs, and we can't blame DDT or Round-Up.

Some of these papers state that single flocks that numbered in the hundreds of millions laid waste to their own nesting and roosting areas due to eating all available food and contaminating the forest with their droppings. Yet hunting is again blamed when hunting would have thinned the population to a point where they weren't consuming all of the food and poisoning the forest with excessive droppings. It's interesting to read these theories, but you have to remember that none of them are able to offer a proven and definite cause for the extinction. And the more you read, the more you come to realize that a lot of what passes for good science is little more than unfounded speculation.

Excellent post, Keith.

SRH