Passenger pigeon flocks once darkened our skies, now they live on through the term ‘stool pigeon’
- Do you have questions about birds, bugs, bees, butterflies or other wildlife? Send your questions to Wild Things and we will try to find the answers.
I have written about many birds that we can find in Massachusetts today – here’s one that used to be here in countless numbers. It was so ubiquitous that people thought it could never become extinct. That’s right: I am talking about the passenger pigeon, the last of which, Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
Many scientists today consider the passenger pigeon to have been a keystone species, animals that play such a vital role in the ecosystem that their removal changes it dramatically. (More about this later.)
What was North America like when passenger pigeons lived here?
Passenger pigeons flew in such great numbers that they sometimes obscured the sunlight; they have even been compared to a solar eclipse. In 1630, Thomas Dudley, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote: “Upon the eighth of March, from after fair daylight until about eight of the clock in the forenoon, there flew over all the towns so many flocks of doves, each flock containing many thousands that they obscured the light.”…