#PASSENGER PIGEON SCIENTIFIC NAME SERIES#

Of these, two are at least mildly in retreat today relative to other species, one seems to have fewer “crops,” and one is ecologically if not genetically extinct. Passenger Pigeons fed on enormous amounts of “mast,” the nuts produced by the then-dominant species of the eastern hardwood forest: white oak, beech, and chestnut. Modern ecological thinking shows us that if you subtract a species that once comprised 40 percent of all the birds in North America, you lose or change more than just a bird. Such a biological phenomenon could not have acted in a void. It covered most of the southern two-thirds of Wisconsin! A flock like this could consume an estimated 210 million liters of food a day.

One recorded breeding colony in Wisconsin in 1871 was 125 miles long and between six and eight miles wide. A single flock in motion could darken the sky over 180 square miles, and take days to pass. At its population’s peak, four to five billion pigeons roared over the forests and prairies of the East and Midwest, a number equal to the entire population of overwintering birds in the United States. Though its appearance was unremarkable, rather like a larger and more vividly colored Mourning Dove, it had habits like no other animal we have ever known.

#PASSENGER PIGEON SCIENTIFIC NAME SERIES#

Calling it a “biological storm,” as Aldo Leopold did, was an understatement it was more like a series of simultaneous biological hurricanes, blowing all the time. The Passenger Pigeon was not just a bird. When the pigeoners subtracted from his numbers, and the pioneers chopped gaps in the continuity of his fuel, his flame guttered out with hardly a sputter or even a wisp of smoke.” - Aldo Leopold Like any other chain reaction, the pigeon could survive no diminution of his own furious intensity. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a traveling blast of life. He was the lightning that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the air.

Passenger pigeon scientific name