The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon: How Billions Became One
Saturday, 4 July 2026
It must have been an awe-inspiring sight – millions upon
millions of passenger pigeons flying across the American landscape. Forest-loving (and living) pigeons were never
seen alone – they would flock and migrate from the southern forest to their breeding
grounds in the north. The size of the
flocks was so large that they would darken the sky, destroy tree branches with
their weight (roosting literally on top of each other) and leave behind a carpet
of passenger pigeon poop. And then, they
were gone.
There had been between 3 and 5 billion passenger
pigeons in the USA and in the space of just a few decades there was just one
left (in a zoo). This endling – the name
given to the last member of a species was known as Martha. This is not only her story, of course, but
that of her entire species.
This is the story of yet another clash between humans and
birds – another which led to the extinction of a species that was once so
numerous it was uncountable. The reason
for the extinction of the passenger pigeon is not as simple as you might think –
it’s more than just being hunted to extinction.
This fascinating video by Bizarre Beasts posits that it was the telegraph
and the railway that finally did for this bird – as well as (ironically) its own
particular survival strategy which, until our arrival, had served it well for
thousands of years.