Was reading an article over on Grrlscientist’s substack, this time about the various birds in “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Partway down it mentions that the passenger pigeon went extinct in 1914, “roughly 100 years after European settlers to North America first came into contact with them.” I couldn’t believe that was right (and honestly, I was surprised that such a glaring error was there, she does great work!), so I checked the Wikipedia page on the Passenger Pigeon.
This page has been revamped since I last visited, and I kinda fell down a wikihole, but these parts stood out at me.
“Competitions could also consist of people standing regularly spaced while trying to shoot down as many birds as possible in a passing flock.[32][126] The pigeon was considered so numerous that 30,000 birds had to be killed to claim the prize in one competition.[43]”
“The last large nesting was in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878 (following one in Pennsylvania a few days earlier), where 50,000 birds were killed each day for nearly five months.”
Disgusting. I know this exists elsewhere, but this scale of killing just…it defies comprehension. And the whole way people were trying to preserve the species, while others were just casually destroying the work…yeah, lots of modern parallels there.
blogsquawk[AT]vershaft.com , but if you made it this far, at least I can wish you a joyous holiday of whatever you celebrate. Or just the day off, hopefully.
-Arrow