Passenger Pigeon

In 1600 the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was possibly the most numerous bird in the world, with population estimates of 3 to 5 billion. The birds traveled in vast flocks from northern Mississippi up to Nova Scotia and from coastal Massachusetts west to the Great Plains, taking as long as three days to pass over. Hunters did not let this bounty pass unmolested. After a pigeon hunt in 1813, the naturalist John James Audubon said of the slaughter, “The Pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps, until each had as many as he could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder.”