![]() The passenger pigeon was found across the majority of North America: east of the Rocky Mountains, from the Great Plains all the way to the Atlantic Coast. Distribution And Habitat of the Passenger Pigeon More recent research, however, has suggested that the closest genus to the passenger pigeon are members of the Patagioenas genus like the band-tailed pigeon and the white-crowned pigeon. The scientific name of the species – Ectopistes migratorius – also refers to its famous migratory characteristics.įor a very long time, it was thought that the mourning dove was the closest relative to the passenger pigeon and at times the two were often confused because of their similar morphology. ![]() The common name of this bird derives from the French word passager which means ‘passing by’, and it fits this bird perfectly thanks to its migratory habits. One report put a large nesting site in Wisconsin as covering 850 square miles with the number of birds in the colony estimated at 136 million.Īmerican writer Christopher Cokinos suggested that if all the passenger pigeons in the USA at one time birds flew in single file, they would have stretched around the earth 22 times. Reports say poop could be as 1 foot deep! It is also said that nesting colonies could cover areas of several miles wide and forty miles long and produce so much pigeon poop it could kill areas of forest. ![]() John James Audubon claimed he watched a flock of 300 million pigeons pass overhead for three days, while Alexander Wilson estimated one particular flock contained two billion birds. Two doyens of scientific ornithology in the USA both made statements. Kevin Johnson, an ornithologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois, has stated that in the early 1800s, the passenger pigeon was the most abundant bird species on the planet. Population numbers really are incredulous but they come from such revered sources that they are also totally believable. At the time that the Europeans set foot on American soil, there were between 3 billion and 5 billion passenger pigeons in the country. The passenger pigeon was native to the North American continent.įor a long time, science believed the passenger pigeon to have descended from pigeons and doves in the Zenaida genus that had colonized the great plains but later studies of its taxonomy and ecology suggest it is more closely linked to migratory Columbidae crossing the Pacific from South East Asia or from Beringia (an area that now corresponds to an area spanning Alaska and parts of Russia and Canada).Įarly explorers and settlers very frequently mentioned the species in their writings, with Samuel de Champlain reporting ‘countless numbers’ of them in 1605.Īt the healthiest stage of their existence, it is estimated the passenger pigeon represented between 25 and 40 percent of the total bird population across the United States. At one time there was a huge population but they became extinct in the early twentieth century. ![]() The passenger pigeon was endemic to North America. There are certain extinct animals that never seem to die in the minds of the public – the woolly mammoth and the dodo are two prime examples.Īnother is the passenger pigeon – interestingly a cousin of the dodo, both being members of the Columbidae family.
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