In the thick forests of the United States and Canada, millions of these birds would nest. This pigeon’s name was Martha and a memorial is currently set up at the zoo in her honor. They were hunted so heavily, the last one died in a Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. While Native Americans did occasionally eat passenger pigeons, most of the heavy hunting was done by colonists to the New World. However, this changed quickly due to deforestation destroying their nesting grounds and the massive hunting of these birds for food. Another observer in Kentucky noted that when a flock of Passenger Pigeons flew overhead it blocked out the sun for 3 days. They were so numerous at one time, that in 1605, Samuel de Champlain reported “countless numbers” and Cotton Mather wrote in the 18 th century that he saw a flock that was a mile wide and took hours to pass. Passenger Pigeons lived from Ontario, Quebec over to Nova Scotia and south all the way to Texas and Florida. It must have been an impressive sight-seeing millions or billions of these birds flying at high speeds overhead. That’s as fast as a hare or a gazelle runs. These birds could fly as fast as 60 miles per hour. One thing you can’t tell from pictures of this bird, however, was just how fast it was. The males were mainly gray, with bronze feathers on the neck and darker spots on the wings and they were about 16.5 inches tall the females were more of a brownish gray color with cinnamon-rose covered breast feathers and were an inch shorter, coming in at just 15.5 inches tall. Passenger Pigeon pictures often show these birds as they once were. It is probably one of the largest extinctions caused by mankind. However, deforestation and massive hunting reduced their numbers from the billions all the way to extinction in only a few years. At one point in time, billions of these birds lived and flew over North America. The Passenger Pigeon – also known as Ectopistes migratorius – is an extinct bird which was endemic to North America.
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