Passenger Pigeon

I saw a British T.V programme on 18th of Feb, called The Dodo’s Guide to Survival. This alaso recalled the plight of the Pasenger Pigeon. I work in conservation with The Birmingham Ranger Service, and deal with bird life alot. and was horified at what mankind did to this wonderful beautiful bird. I almost felt ashamed to be human for a few minutes. It has affected me emotionally for days since and each time I see a pigeon I feel physically ill. Thank God for the R.S.P.B, and the mind boggles at what people might have done to wood pigeons. collared doves ferals, stock doves etc.
I can only hope that with modern technology and cloning , maybe we may see The Passenger Pigeon return to our trees, rooftops, and fields.

I have played three songs this week to pay homage to Columba migratorius Jimi Hendrix – Little Wing, Lenny Kravitz – I want To Get Away, and Fly Away and Led Zeppelin – Night Flight.

I appreciate everyones support and even your scepticism. I will try and address all your concerns as to why this shouldn’t be possible.

Lets start with the theory “One of the traits of the Passenger pigeon was it needed a large colony to breed and raise its young.”

I think the real problem was Passenger Pigeons needed to breed in a large colony for us to be able to find them. I read every written account of hunting Passenger Pigeons and to me it doesn’t sound like hunting to me. Flocks were so large all you had to do was follow and kill indisciminately. We never developed the skills to hunt small flocks because we never needed to due to the overpopulated million bird flocks. We never learned the important things that made it possible to find smaller flocks. For example preferred habitat, preferred foods, preferred home range, ect,.

Ok on to “Why hasn’t a hunter accidently shot one?”. There are many different reasons for this. First off dove hunting isn’t that popular around here. I honestly do not know anyone that actively hunts dove here in Pennsylvania. Seems very popular out west but not around here.

Another reason dove hunting season in PA is sometime in September. By mid July the fledging pigeons are encouraged heavily by their parents to fly. It is actually a group flock effort I find very interresting. If you have studied what little information there is about Passenger Pigeons many reports say that the trees would be so full of Pigeons large limbs would break off under the combined weight of the birds. From my own observations I understand why they did this. This was done on purpose to pressure the fledgelings to fly. Many birds force their young to learn Passenger Pigeons had a different approach instead of pushing from the nest they broke the branch or limb the young were standing on.

I would love 15 minutes of fame but I will share what I know about their preferred breeding habitat to give everyone a chance to find them. Hopefully someone with access to this type of habitat will read this and get lucky enough to see them.

They prefer to lay their eggs in large conifer trees growing along a ledge or cliff. First time I saw them they were in an oak tree on the edge of an abandoned coal strip mining pit. In this part of PA there are thousands of these abandoned mining pits. They would probably be using similair sites further south in the Appalachians. I imagine stone quarries would also make a suitable breeding habitat. Mines are quarries are not open to the public for hunting or hiking or tresspassing in anyway so anyone that would see them would most likely be tresspassing and the incident would go unreported.

Workers and owners would not report them even if they did know what they were looking at. They would imediately be on the endangered species list and therefore their breeding grounds would be protected by Federal Law. I think mining and wildlife conservation could work together since the birds seem to prefer their land already I think mines and quarries could still operate without affecting the birds breeding.

I will now explain why I think captive breeding failed. I think it mostly had to do with their diet. We didn’t understand what they needed to eat. Everything you read says they ate acorns, chestnuts, and other seeds and grains. A large flock wouldn’t have much choice but to eat anything that was available. The few occassions I have observed these birds feeding were eating insects. One was eating some sort of grubs off a dead standing tree and another was eating insect off tree buds. I think insects are the preferred food but a flock of a million birds would have depleted the insect population so quickly they would of had to settle for anything left.

Almost forgot to cover what I know about their migration. They arrive to PA around mid March, could be a coincidence but the only migration I observed happened to be the morning after the full moon. Smaller flocks prefer to migrate predawn hours of the morning. The large million bird flocks took hours to pass threw an area but early morning is the preferred time.

Hopefully what I type here makes sense to some of you that read this. I do not wish to force my opinion on anyone just please keep an open mind if you see something that looks like a very large red eyed dove please take a picture and you can have the 15 minutes of fame. I can see the headlines now “Greatest Wildlife Survival Story of All Time”. You never know could be your picture under that headline.

Thanks,
Kevin