Passenger Pigeon

i need to do a science folio about extinct and endangered species

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.

Now don’t go making yourself sick over this. The truth is they are only believed to be extinct. I have seen a small population of passenger pigeon in Pennsylvania. If we don’t destroy any more nesting grounds they still have a chance. I did manage to get some pictures of the one that didn’t immediately fly away. Let me know if anyone is interrested in seeing them.

I would indeed be interested in seeing these birds, id you would be kind enough to email me the images.

Many Thanks

Malcolm Jacques

I would gladly send you the pictures. Just need an email address.

Kevin

Kevin B you know you said you had video of your passenger pigeon sighting but you accidentally taped over it are you sure you don’t have a copy of it somewhere if you do tell me.

I would also love to see the photos … My heart breaks at the fate of such a lovely bird … have you ever sent these photos to an agency that might be able to protect these birds (that is, if they are confirmed to be Passenger pidgeons)? Thankfully, species thought extinct are sometimes rediscovered in small numbers and need all of our help! Please let someone – such as an animal conservation group – know about your finding. I am sure many, many, many of them would be interested. Good luck.

Are your photos available to artists to use as reference photos? I would even be interested in paying a fee for use.

Thank you

Deborah

im doing a folder of extinct animals i need about 8

im doing a folder of extinct animals i need about 8

The passenger pigeon was a great bird, its almost sad to know that even second hand accounts of the bird cannot be told, due to the amount of time that has passed. In 1914, my grandparents had yet to be born. Kevin i would love to see th pictures you have. If you would, please email them to me at justfresh50@yahoo.com

Justin C

Hell, yeah, I’d be interested in seeing your photos of the “Passenger Pigeons”! If only it were true… Are you sure you weren’t seeing a mourning dove, or even an off-colored rock pigeon?

please give me all nice birds. thanks and i like pigeons.

The existence of an extinct species such as the passenger pigeon would be encouraging. E-mail photo please.

Kevin B., Please send me pictures at ewest21@hotmail.com!

From what molecular geneticists say, it could be possible to clone the passenger pigeon from existing genetic material in preserved birds of that species. Doing that would be a very good test of genetic technique, anyway.

I’d like very much to see photos of the Pennsylvania group of passenger pigeons.

Kevin,

Is there any way you could send me pictures also, I would really like to see them!

Joe

In cloning recently extinct species, apparently existing nuclei would be removed from eggs of a related species, and dna recovered from the extinct species placed into those eggs. They would then be incubated. First solve the problems in restoring simple species such as frogs, then go on to more comlex species. It would be necessary to select species that are likely to recover. Passenger pigeons and dodos are among those most treasured, though its not clear they would be most likely to recover significant population.
The rallying cry could be ‘Clone the Dodo’.

I email everyone my pictures to everyone upon request but I need your email address. The pictures are lacking quality due to the great distance they were taken from.

I am 100% positive they are of a real living Passenger Pigeon. I have studied wildlife my entire life. Which amounts to many decades of real world experience actually being out in the woods not just reading about it in books. Don’t get me wrong there are alot of knowledge to be learned from books but I always been a firm believer that there is no replacement for hands on experience.

I just recently purchased a high quality camera and I am anticipating this spring I will be able to produce enough evidence to validate my claims.

From what I understand no one has been able to successfully clone any species of bird at all. So I think expecting someone to be able to resurrect an extinct species from a living relatives DNA is so far off I wouldn’t hold my breath.

This is interesting because both ideas are low in probability but have serious chances of being true. A species of woodpecker was found just a few years ago living in the wild – I forget which kind – which was thought to be extinct since the early 1900′s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_have_been_cloned

has a list that includes carp, recently. Molecular biologists are very progressive and make huge jumps. like from yeast, to more complex organisms. Resurrecting an extinct species is likely to be high on their list.

It would not have to start with an extinct species, just breed a member of one species by grafting it onto the reproductive cycle of a similar but distinguishable species.

True, though, it’s not something to hold one’s breath over.

omg could you send me some of those pics pleassseeeeeess

Please send me the pictures as well. For a good read on some of our extinct bird species I highly recommend “Hope is the thing with feathers”! It has chapters on the passenger pigeon, ivory billed woodpecker and the Carolina parakeet. It has been a while since I read it but do remember how fascinating it was. For a review of the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Hope-Thing-Feathers-Personal-Chronicle/dp/0446677493?tag=dogpile-20

I would love to see the photo’s of Passenger Pigeons if they are available from anyone.

What about persuading the owner of It’s Nature website to host a photo? One or two of the best would go a long way.

Please be patient like I said before I have some pictures but they are not deffinative due to the poor quality. If you can wait a few months I should have undisputable high quality photo’s and possibly HD video.

This will be a major news story you will hear about soon.

I sure hope that you have identified them correctly. If so it would be the find of lifetime! Can you please send whatever photos you have?

Thanks,
Todd

We’d love to host any photos you may have on it’s nature! please send any pictures/videos to info@itsnature.org and we will credit you in return. Thanks!

Please send pictures. I am hoping you have a find.

Good luck Kevin B. I hope you pruduce some worthy news. This could be fantastic! Please include me on your updates wfmciver@gmail.com Thanks.

Where at in PA did you see these birds? I would love to go and get some pictures this spring. Send me a private email, please?

There were some years before the Passenger Pigeon went extinct that conservationist tried to save the species. The problem was that the species number had gotten to low so the species collapsed. One of the traits of the Passenger pigeon was it needed a large colony to breed and raise its young. Get only a couple of Passenger Pigeons together and they wouldn’t breed. This is why those early attempts to save the Passenger Pigeon while they are alive failed.
Thought to be extinct species rediscovered does happen. I wouldn’t hold my breath on the Passenger Pigeon.
The Ivory Billed Woodpecker is a different story but the jury is still out. It needs to be independently verified, but it does need to be in a flock so there is more hope.
If Kevin B can provide the evidence it would be shocking. He would definitely get his 15 minutes of fame.

I want to see the pictures.

Usually I don’t pay attention to what people type related to this species, because it’s either they say they’ve seen one or caught one.. stupid attention seekers. Well, they don’t have concrete evidence to prove this and after what I’ve seen in this thread, The infamous Kevin B says he actually photographed one.

You caught me, convincing. I would like to see these photos. All these time I thought they were Instinct.
And as Mark Sullivan said, If you can provide the evidence you might get your “15 minutes” of Fame.

Send them to me, Izanagi_Zetsumei@yahoo.com

Goodluck, Cheers.

Has anyone actually seen the pictures?

PLEASE – PLEASE – PLEASE email your passenger pigeon photos. I live in PA & am an avid pigeon enthusiast having raised many different breeds. (((((^_^)))))

Ok -> I saw them… & it looks just like a blurry photo of a regular ol’ Mourning Dove to me :(

Hmmm – now let me inject a little common sense:

With all the hunting of doves in Pennsylvania & sooo many other states…literally by the millions & millions each Autumn –>

Don’t you think one hunter would accidentally shoot one of these supposedly extinct passenger pigeons & report it if it were still around for all the fame & media stampede???

Just trying to stay rational here. :)

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

Ok – let me 1st clarify –> I’m an avid outdoor enthusiast & dove hunter.

Mourning Doves are delicious & I view their controlled harvest as a prudent approach to conservation.

For the record – I also have raised countless pigeons of all sorts & relish the hobby. :) Though I’ve had many exotic birds, my all-time favorite was a friendly little barn pigeon that I hand-fed as a squab to adulthood.

My own pp experience – Recently, I spied several similar birds to those aforementioned while I was out hiking down here in Nottingham County Park PA.
LORD – Sure wish I had my camera with me that day!!! :(

Overall – they looked to me very much like a few Jumbo-sized Mourning Doves. They were all pecking @ some gravel along the trail.

Alas – as I approached them about 5 seconds of observation they flew away. :(

Hmmm… now IF these actually were passenger pigeons & IF the many other PA sightings are found to be legitimate, then I feel maybe evolution somehow gave these few remaining birds ancestors an edge to survive by adapting their behavior in ways that sustained the scattered remnants of the once vast empire of their kind.

Certainly Nature enables creatures to change & those adaptations are sometimes advantageous.

Another theory – kinda X-Files, but certainly not impossible with the advances made in cloning etc: Is that some scientists have seemingly resurrected the species & are secretly reintroducing them to the wild. Far-fetched sure, but with today’s technology it is not necessarily the stuff of science fiction.

So – what we really need is some crystal clear footage…obviously HD video would be best & maybe a few feather for DNA analysis. Such evidence must be conclusive.

I propose we start a Club…

Call it the Passenger Pigeon Consortium (((((^_^))))) PPC

15 minutes could easily become a lifetime of joy as we witness future generations experience the thrill of seeing with their own eyes that despite the odds – life prevails. :)

So – who is ready to join?

Gary,

I’ll join the Consortium if it’s not too dear.

It might be useful to extend the name to suggest several species because more than
one seems to be extinct by the hand of Man.

The idea of resurrection was also in the phrase “clone the dodo” which was floating around.
Lemmesee, that would be PPD.

Here in Washington several herds of buffalo exist. Always small, they are an important
reminder.

With the passenger pigeon, resurrecting species which we ourselves extinguished becomes a
more important moral goal. It’s a good idea, and will also produce the same kind of data which
is obtained from cloning any kind of species.

Michael Lewis
Seattle

Good Day , I would just like to add a comment about the difficulty in breeding these birds. Methinks it a bit of a ruse put out by Americans to kind of explain away their failed attempt to save them by a captive breeding programme. In fact passenger pigeons bred perfectly well even if only a pair of them were kept as was often the case in many zoos in Europe. Breeding older birds is not really very easy to do and in the case of Martha and her mates they were old birds and it seems were not even looked after by say a pigeon fancier who may have at least had an idea of how to encourage them and so the myth of their difficlty to breed grew up and now seems to be accepted almost everywhere. But the record of European zoos was they were easy and at one of the great houses in England i forget which they bred so well they would regularly open the aviaries to let them go ! Having said that attempts to establish them in Britain and France failed. I would point out that this same argument for communal breeding was used about blue whales and also the cahow bird (extinct for three hundred years until found alive and well but no longer nesting in big colonies) May i also point out a rather obvious conclusion, the mourning dove and the passenger pigeon may have been two different species but did anyone explain that to them? did they interbreed? did they produce fertile hybrids? do some populations of mourning doves have many characteristics of passenger pigeons? this kind of thing occurs between red deer and sika deer here in UK and also naturally between black grouse and capercaillie. Passenger pigeons could interbreed with domestic doves but the offspring were alsways infertile but what of crosses with other closely related species of pigeon?

Gary,

I live not too far from Nottingham park. My own undocumented sightings occured near my home (near Oxford Pa) on 2 occasions. In late February 1999 and again in 2003. I was less than 40 feet from the first sighting on a hemlock alongside my driveway. The bird had the size, a robin redddish breast and dark grey too blue head and neck. I did not notice red eyes. It did have some dark mottling on the neck like a mourning dove. I watched the bird for almost a full minute. I saw it again the following day on the peak of my roof over the garage. The second sighting in 2003 was very similar. When it flew away it made no whistling sound like a mourning dove. In late February 2004 there was a very large Mourning dove looking bird under the feeder on the deck. It was with 3 other mourning doves and was almost twice the size. My wife shared this sighting with me. Once again by the time I got the camera the bird was gone.
I don’t know exactly what I saw. I spend a lot of time afield hunting, fishing, hiking and always observing. I thought both birds had characteristics of both with size standing out the most.
I’ll join your consortium.

Gary,

I live not too far from Nottingham park. My own undocumented sightings occured near my home (near Oxford Pa) on 2 occasions. In late February 1999 and again in 2003. I was less than 40 feet from the first sighting on a hemlock alongside my driveway. The bird had the size, a robin redddish breast and dark grey too blue head and neck. I did not notice red eyes. It did have some dark mottling on the neck like a mourning dove. I watched the bird for almost a full minute. I saw it again the following day on the peak of my roof over the garage. The second sighting in 2003 was very similar. When it flew away it made no whistling sound like a mourning dove. In late February 2004 there was a very large Mourning dove looking bird under the feeder on the deck. It was with 3 other mourning doves and was almost twice the size. My wife shared this sighting with me. Once again by the time I got the camera the bird was gone.
I don’t know exactly what I saw. I spend a lot of time afield hunting, fishing, hiking and always observing. I thought both birds had characteristics of both with size standing out the most.
I’ll join your consortium.

Kevin,

The season is now. I believe the migration starts at the end of February. I don’t know if the birds I saw were PP or some oversized PP/Mouring dove hybrid look alike but I have only seen these birds around this time of the year. I live along the East Branch of Big Elk 5 miles above the Maryland state line and believe the birds follow it (the Big Elk) up in late winter from the south. I have spent over 12 years (since my first sighting) reading every tidbit ever published I could find about them. Please email copies of any photos to jpgallo05@comcast.net

Thanks,
Joe

Kevin,

The season is now. I believe the migration starts at the end of February. I don’t know if the birds I saw were PP or some oversized PP/Mouring dove hybrid look alike but I have only seen these birds around this time of the year. I live along the East Branch of Big Elk 5 miles above the Maryland state line and believe the birds follow it (the Big Elk) up in late winter from the south. I have spent over 12 years (since my first sighting) reading every tidbit ever published I could find about them. Please email copies of any photos to jpgallo05@comcast.net

Thanks,
Joe

I have spoken to others about these sightings & am confident these are authentic. I have my HD camera with me @ all times during my hiking now. Any updates will get posted asap as I am confident there are some pockets of the species still living in seclusion.

Trying to reach you via email… I’m Gary A. I also reside in the Oxford area… We should definiely unite via The Passenger Pigeon Consortium… My HD camera is ready. :)

All others please feel free to contact me:

funky-mashed-potatoes@rocketmail.com

I saw photos from Gary A. but I don’t know if they were yours. I looked at them on a really good computer and the breast coloring on one of the doves seems right for a PP, but focus was less than ideal. There was something else in body structure that caught my eye based on my own observation. I agree with most of your observations as they relate to my own experience. It of course is not about 15 minutes of fame. Please email me @jpgallo05@comcast.net

Hi Gary, would it be possible to forward the photos to me? awhitva@juno.com . I live in Virginia and I will be looking for the passenger pigeons, if they should happen to pass through my state on their way to PA. Seems like the more people who are aware and looking, the better chance we have of someone getting a good photo or video.
As remote as the chances may seem, there are other documented examples of animals once thought to be extinct turning up again. The ivory billed woodpecker may be one of them.

Hi
Kevin,

I
live in Virginia and spend a lot of time in the woods. Please send me your
picture(s) if you don’t mind. I believe there is ample evidence that the great
Ivory Billed woodpecker is still alive, so perhaps even a handful of Passenger
Pigeons have somehow escaped notice – you know just a couple of years ago
scientist discovered a new species of large crayfish in Kentucky that local
folks have overlooked for all the years the state has been settled. I am
willing to keep an open mind about passenger pigeons and keep an eye out for
them. If they show up in PA, they would mostly likely pass through my state on
the way (at least they used to pass through VA 150 years ago when they were
still somewhat common).

I
have also read a lot about passenger pigeons and have noticed several accounts
referring to the successful breeding of the species in captivity in the mid to
late 1800′s. Charles O. Whitman even crossed one with a Ringneck Dove and he
hatched the famous Martha in 1902 in captivity – the last known Passenger
Pigeon which would die 12 years later in the Cincinnati zoo. I wish, after
Whitman’s death, some other pigeon fanciers had continued breeding them, rather
than giving up the last few birds to the zoo – it is obvious the zoo didn’t
know what to do with them. The photos indicate that they were kept in very
sterile, stark cages rather than a natural-like environment. I raise and have
raised many birds myself: including pigeons, pheasants, wild quail, wild
turkeys and wild mourning doves; and since they are at the bottom of the food
chain, they are always more relaxed and comfortable the more privacy they have.
(I have even gotten wild Bobwhite Quail to sit on their eggs and raise their
chicks in captivity, which many people claim they won’t do, and I have video on
Youtube to prove it. Since Bobwhite quail are rapidly declining and my state
and others are racing to try to save them, this information could perhaps be
useful someday.)

By
the way, have you ever read the accounts of individuals and zoos rearing
Passenger Pigeon in Europe (from birds captured and shipped from the USA) and
wondered if they were so easy to breed, why the Europeans didn’t manage to
preserve a living flock of them when we failed? Did they just get tired of
raising them and quit, or did they let them all go and they perished in the
wild? I wonder when the last Passenger Pigeon in Europe died?

Anyway,
please send anything you have to awhitva@juno.com and
I’ll help if I can. Andy Whitman

Hi again Kevin. In doing so more late night research, I found some of the answers to my own questions. Passengers Pigeons did ineed breed well in captivity, but also ceased after a few generations due to repeated inbreeding. A Mr. David Whittaker of Milwaukee, WI had a captured pair in the mid-1880′s of which he was eventually able to get a total of 15 birds – 6 males and 9 females. A pair went to Prof. Charles Whitman of the Univ. of Chicago who also sucessfully raised a few more birds (one of which was the famous Martha – the last known Passenger Pigeon), but they were all related. After a few generations, both the Chicago flock and the Wisconsin flocks stopped breeding altogether, and though a desperate search was made for some wild birds to bring in some fresh genes, no more could be found. (I suspect the same thing happened with the pairs that were sent to Europe – such as the ones Audubon mentions sending to England to the Earl of Kirby in 1830.) Prof. Whitman then tried crossing his remaining birds with common ringneck doves and sucessfully raised 3 hybrid males, in hopes of preserving some of the gene pool and on day breeding back to get a purer bird, but the 3 males were infertile. Unfortunately, by the time a few concernd individuals started captive breeding programs, they had too few birds to work with. I hope you are right and against all hope that there is still a wild flock out there somewhere.

Hi Kevin and Gary – is it possible that what you have been seeing are “White Winged Doves?” They are historically found in the western states and are similar to a mourning dove, but larger. They are actually in the pigeon family, and true to their name, have a fair amount of white on their wings. They are migratory and have very recently expanded outside of their normal range and are now showing up in my state, Virginia. You might want to look them up on Wikipedia or another internet page and compare to your photos – there is some good imformation and good photos of them on the Internet. Andy

Hi Kevin and Gary – is it possible that what you have been seeing are “White Winged Doves?” They are historically found in the western states and are similar to a mourning dove, but larger. They are actually in the pigeon family, and true to their name, have a fair amount of white on their wings. They are migratory and have very recently expanded outside of their normal range and are now showing up in my state, Virginia. You might want to look them up on Wikipedia or another internet page and compare to your photos – there is some good imformation and good photos of them on the Internet. Andy