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The Passenger Pigeon

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Title: The Passenger Pigeon

Editor: Wm. B. Mershon


        
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Language: English

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THE PASSENGER PIGEON


[Illustration: PASSENGER PIGEON (_Columba Migratoria_)

Upper bird, male; lower, female]


THE PASSENGER PIGEON

by

W. B. MERSHON







[Illustration: Publisher's Logo]

New York The Outing Publishing Company 1907

Copyright, 1907, by W B Mershon

The Outing Press Deposit, N. Y.




CONTENTS


        CHAPTER                                                      PAGE

        Introduction                                                   ix

      I My Boyhood Among the Pigeons                                    1

     II The Passenger Pigeon                                            9
          _From "American Ornithology," by Alexander Wilson_

    III The Passenger Pigeon                                           25
          _From "Ornithological Biography," by John James Audubon_

     IV As James Fenimore Cooper Saw It                                41

      V The Wild Pigeon of North America                               48
          _By Chief Pokagon, in "The Chautauquan"_

     VI The Passenger Pigeon                                           60
          _From "Life Histories of North American Birds,"
            by Charles Bendire_

    VII Netting the Pigeons                                            74
          _By William Brewster, in "The Auk"_

   VIII Efforts to Check the Slaughter                                 77
          _By Prof. H. B. Roney_

     IX The Pigeon Butcher's Defense                                   93
          _By E. T. Martin, in "American Field"_

      X Notes of a Vanished Industry                                  105

     XI Recollections of "Old Timers"                                 119

    XII The Last of the Pigeons                                       141

   XIII What Became of the Wild Pigeon?                               163
          _By Sullivan Cook, in "Forest and Stream"_

    XIV A Novel Theory of Extinction                                  173
          _By C. H. Ames and Robert Ridgway_

     XV News from John Burroughs                                      179

    XVI The Pigeon in Manitoba                                        186
          _By George E. Atkinson_

   XVII The Passenger Pigeon in Confinement                           200
          _By Ruthven Deane, in "The Auk"_

  XVIII Nesting Habits of the Passenger Pigeon                        209
          _By Dr. Morris Gibbs, in "The Oölogist"_

    XIX Miscellaneous Notes                                           217




ILLUSTRATIONS


  The Passenger Pigeon                                     _Frontispiece_
    _By Louis Agassiz Fuertes_

                                                              FACING PAGE

  Audubon Plate (_color_)                                              24

  Passenger Pigeon and Mourning Dove                                   88

  Fac-simile of "Among the Pigeons"                                    92

  H. T. Phillip's Store                                               104

  Band-tailed Pigeon (_color_)                                        130

  Comparative Size of Pigeon and Dove                                 156

  Young Passenger Pigeon                                              198

  Pigeon Net                                                          218




INTRODUCTION


For the last three years I have spent most of my leisure time in
collecting as much material as possible which might help to throw light
on the oft-repeated query, "What has become of the wild pigeons?" The
result of this labor of love is scarcely more than a compilation, and
I am under many obligations to those who have so cheerfully assisted
me. I have given them credit by name in connection with their various
contributions, but I wish that I might have been able to give them the
more finished and literary setting that would have been within the
reach of a trained writer or scientist. I am merely a business man who
is interested in the Passenger Pigeon because he loves the outdoors and
its wild things, and sincerely regrets the cruel extinction of one of
the most interesting natural phenomena of his own country. If I have
been able to make a compilation that otherwise would not have been
available for the interested reader, I need make no further apologies
for the imperfect manner of my treatment of this subject.

It is hard for us of an older generation to realize that as recently as
1880 the Passenger Pigeon was thronging in countless millions through
large areas of the Middle West, and that in our boyhood we could find
no exaggeration in the records of such earlier observers as Alexander
Wilson, the ornithologist, who said that these birds associated in
such prodigious numbers as almost to surpass belief, and that their
numbers had no parallel among any other feathered tribes on the face
of the earth; or that one of their "roosts" would kill the trees over
thousands of acres as completely as if the whole forest had been
girdled with an ax.

Audubon estimated that an average flock of these pigeons contained a
billion and a quarter of birds, which consumed more than eight and a
half million bushels of mast in a day's feeding. They were slain by
millions during the middle of the last century, and from one region in
Michigan in one year three million Passenger Pigeons were killed for
market, while in that roost alone as many more perished because of the
barbarous methods of hunting them. They supplied a means of living for
thousands of hunters, who devastated their flocks with nets and guns,
and even with fire. Yet so vast were their numbers that after thirty
years of observation Audubon was able to say that "even in the face
of such dreadful havoc nothing but the diminution of our forests can
accomplish their decrease."

Many theories have been advanced to account for the disappearance
of the wild pigeons, among them that their migration may have been
overwhelmed by some cyclonic disturbance of the atmosphere which
destroyed their myriads at one blow. The big "nesting" of 1878 in
Michigan was undoubtedly the last large migration, but the pigeons
continued to nest infrequently in Michigan and the North for several
years after that, and until as late as 1886 they were trapped for
market or for trap-shooting. Therefore the pigeons did not become
extinct in a day; nor did one tremendous catastrophe wipe them from the
face of the earth. They gradually became fewer and existed for twenty
years or more after the date set as that of the final extermination.

At one time the wild pigeons covered the entire north from the Gaspé
Peninsula to the Red River of the North. Separate nestings and flights
were of regular yearly occurrence over this vast eastern and northern
expanse. Gradually civilization, molestation and warfare drove them
from the Atlantic seaboard west, until Michigan was their last grand
rendezvous, in which region their mighty hosts congregated for the
final grand nesting in 1878. As late as 1845 they were quite numerous
on the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec, but disappeared from there about that
time.

The habits of the birds were such that they could not thrive singly
nor in small bodies, but were dependent upon one another, and vast
communities were necessary to their very existence, while an enormous
quantity of food was necessary for their sustenance. The cutting off
of the forests and food supply interfered with their plan of existence
and drove them into new localities, and the ever increasing slaughter
could not help but lessen their once vast numbers.

The Passenger Pigeon laid only one egg in its nest, rarely two, and
although it bred three or four times a year it could not replenish the
numbers slaughtered by the professional netters. Undoubtedly millions
of the birds perished at various periods along the Great Lakes country,
becoming confused in foggy weather and dropping from exhaustion into
the water, while snow and sleet storms at times caused great mortality
among the young birds, and even among the old ones, which often arrived
in the North before winter had passed.

The history of the buffalo is repeated in that of the wild pigeon, the
extermination of which was inspired by the same motive: the greed of
man and the pursuit of the almighty dollar. We lock the barn door after
the horse is stolen. Our white pine forests and timber lands in general
have been wantonly destroyed with no thought for the future. The
American people are wasteful. They are just beginning to learn the need
of economy in the use of that which Nature has flung at their feet.
When one recalls the destruction of that noble animal, the buffalo,
frequently for nothing else than so-called sport, or the removal of
a robe; when one thinks of the burning of forest trees which took
centuries to grow, merely to clear a piece of land to raise crops, it
is not to be wondered at that the wild pigeon, insignificant, and not
even classed as a game bird, so soon became extinct.




The Passenger Pigeon




CHAPTER I

My Boyhood Among the Pigeons


My boyhood was made active and wholesome by a love for outdoor pastimes
that had been bred in me by generations of sport-loving ancestors. From
which side of the genealogical tree this ardor for field and forest and
open sky had come with stronger influence I cannot say. While my father
was the one to use the fowling-piece and cast the fly for the glorious
speckled trout, my mother was a willing conspirator, for it was she
who packed the lunch basket, often called us for the start in the gray
morning, and went along to "hold the horse" while we shot pigeons. And
when we were bent on a day in the woods in bracing October weather she
drove old Dolly sedately along the winding trail, while I hunted one
side of the woods and father hunted the other. On such days we were
after partridges, of course, ruffed grouse, the king of all game birds.
Often mother marked them down and told us just where they had crossed
the road, or whether the bird was hit, for the cloud of smoke from the
old black powder made seeing guesswork on our part. She loved the dogs,
too, those good old friends and workers, Sport, Bob, and Ranger.

I remember calling my mother to a window early one morning and
shouting: "See there! a flock of pigeons! Ah, ha! April fool!" This
time I did not deceive her with the threadbare trick. The joke was "on
me" for once. There was a flight of pigeons that morning, the first
one of the season, and behind the foremost flock another and another
came streaming. Away from the east side of the river at the north of
the town, from near Crow Island, they swept like a cloud. Crossing
the river to the west they reached the woods near Jerome's mill and
skirted the clearings or passed in waves over the tree tops, back of
John Winter's farm, and then wheeled to the south. Out of the tongue of
woodland, just back of the Hermansau Church, they poured, thence over
the fields, too high to be shot, and then away to the evergreens and
stately pines of Pine Hill; on, on, on across the Tittabawassee, to
some feeding ground we knew not how far away.

Now that the pigeons had come they would "fly" every morning. This we
knew from years of observation in the great migration belt of Michigan.
They would fly lower to-morrow morning, and in a day or two more sweep
low enough for the sixteen-gauge and the number eight shot to reach
them. Sometimes, even now, forty years after the last of the great
passenger pigeon flights, I fall to day-dreaming and seem to hear
myself saying in the eager, piping tones of those golden boyhood days:

"Mother, I am going for pigeons to-morrow morning! Do call me if I
oversleep. I must be awake by four o'clock. We'll have pigeon pot-pie
to-morrow. I'm going to bed early so as to be sure to be up by
daybreak. Old Sport is going along to 'fetch' dead birds."

"Hello, dad," cries a voice in my ear, "what are you up to? What are
you hustling around so for with your old shot pouch and powder-flask?
There's nothing to shoot this time of the year."

The spell is broken; my own boy fetches his daddy out of his dream,
and I am fairly caught in the act of making an old fool of myself. My
youngsters are counting the days before May first when I have promised
to take them trout-fishing, and the smallest boy found his first gun in
his stocking last Christmas. But they can know nothing at all about the
joys and excitement of pigeon shooting in the vanished days when these
birds fairly darkened the sky above our old homestead. But I try to
tell them what we used to do and my story sounds something like this:

"It is early in the spring, so early that a bunch of snow may yet
be found on the north side of the largest of the fallen trees in
the woods. Puddles that the melting snow left in the hollows of the
clearing are fringed with ice this morning, and we look around and tell
each other, 'There was a frost last night.' The mud in the road has
stiffened, and the rutted cattle tracks are also streaked and barred
with ice. Yet winter has gone and spring is here, for the buds are
swelling on the twigs of the elms and the pussy willows show their
dainty, silvery signals to tell us that the vernal equinox has come and
gone.

"If the springtime is still young, so is the day. Light is breaking
in the gray sky of dawn as we hurry along the slippery, sticky road.
We must make haste to the point of woods, by John Winter's clearing,
before full daybreak or the pigeons will be flying and we will miss the
early flocks which always keep nearest the ground.

"You may be curious to know what we look like as we trudge along in
Indian file, eagerly chatting about a kind of sport which this later
generation knows nothing about. I am a chunk of a country lad, topped
by a woolen cap with ear-tabs pulled down over my ears, a tippet around
my neck, yarn mittens on my hands, which are sure to be badly skinned
and chapped this time of year from playing 'knuckle-down-tight.'

"My 'every-day pants' are tucked into a pair of calf-skin boots with
square pieces of red leather for the tops, an old-fashioned adornment
dear to Young America of my day. My old Irish water spaniel 'Sport' is
tagging behind or charging frantically ahead; my gun is a sixteen-gauge
muzzle loader, stub and twist barrels, with dogs' heads for the hammers.

"Dangling from one shoulder is a leather shot pouch that cuts off
one ounce of number eights for a load. The sides of this pouch are
embossed, on the one a group of English woodcock, on the other a
setter rampant. Hanging at my left side by a green cord with a tassel
or two is my fluted copper powder flask, ready to measure out two and
three-fourths drams of coarse Dupont or Curtis & Harvey powder.

"My pockets are full of Ely's black-edged wads, for I am a young
nabob of sportsmen, let me tell you, and I scorn to use tow or bits
of newspaper for wadding. My vest pocket holds the caps, G. D.'s or
Ely's again, for didn't I tell you that I was a nabob. The _pièce de
résistance_ of this outfit is the game bag, the pride of my eye, for
it was a Christmas present, and this is its maiden shooting trip.
Suspended over the left shoulder so that it will hang well back of
the right hip, the strap that carries it is broad and with many holes
for the wondrous buckle which can be shifted to hang it in the most
comfortable place, wherever that is, for when it is loaded with game it
will choke me almost to death, no matter how I adjust it. This noble
bag has two pockets, one of them for luncheon, and on the outside is a
netted pocket, easy to get into and keeping the birds cool. I nearly
forgot to mention its magnificent fringe, which hangs down from both
sides and the bottom like the war-bags of an Indian chief.

"My companions are rigged out in much the same fashion. They are grown
men, however, for I don't remember any other boys who shot pigeons
with me. Holabird or khaki hunting suits are as yet unknown, and even
corduroy coats are rare. The powder horn is seen as often as the copper
flask, and one hunter has a shot belt with two compartments instead of
the English pouch. Of guns the assortment is as varied as the number of
hunters, but the old, hard-kicking army musket with its iron ramrod is
more popular than any other arm.

"We reach the edge of the clearing not a minute too soon. Now and then
a distant shot tells us that we are not the first hunters out afield
this morning. The guns are cracking everywhere along the road that
skirts the woodland, and back in, close to the 'chopping,' some better
wing-shots are posted by the openings into the woods where the birds
fly lower, but where the shooting is more difficult. It is largely
of the 'pick your bird' style, for the flight of a pigeon is very
swift, and when they are darting among the tree-tops of a small forest
opening, rare skill is required to bag one's birds.

"I prefer to take the flocks, even though they offer me more distant
targets, and soon my gun-barrels are as hot as those of the rest of the
skirmishers. Sometimes two or three birds drop from a flock at a single
discharge, and then several shots may not fetch from on high more than
one or two of the long tail-feathers spinning and twisting to the
ground. It is fascinating to watch the whirling, shining descent of one
of these feathers, and I pick up one and stick it in my cap as a matter
of habit.

"This kind of pigeon shooting takes a good gun and ammunition to kill
a big bag as we bang away at long range at the birds on their way to
the morning feeding-ground. The flight is over by half-past six o'clock
and I am home by seven o'clock ready for breakfast and then to scamper
off to school.

"The pigeons in this particular locality have followed the same routine
as long as I have known them. They only fly in the morning, always
going in the same direction, and I can't recall seeing them coming back
again, or flying later in the day. This habit holds until the young
squabs are in the nests in June, after which we are likely to find
pigeons almost anywhere, for their feeding grounds become scattered and
local.

"One thing that annoys me in these brave days of youth and sport is
the poacher, the low-down fellow who steals my birds. I am reckoned a
pretty good shot, and I have a first-rate gun, but I am only a boy, so
the pigeon thief thinks I am fair picking, and he saves his ammunition
by claiming every bird that drops anywhere near him.

"Another smart dodge of his is to fire into a flock ahead or behind
the one I am shooting at and then claim whatever birds fall as the
quarry of both our guns. If he is not too big I try to lick him, but
generally I have to submit to the rascality unless I can persuade a
grown-up friend to take my part. Sometimes these villains hang around
my shooting ground without any guns at all, and pick up as many birds
as I do. Then I hunt around for a father or an uncle to reinforce my
protests and there is a pretty row which ends in the interloper taking
to his heels to wait for a more propitious occasion.

"When we are ready to carry our birds home we pull out the four long
tail-feathers and knot them together at the tips. Then the quill ends
are stuck through the soft part of the lower mandible, and the birds
are strung together, eight or ten in a string. These strings are
bunched together by tying the quill ends of the feathers, and we have
our game festooned in compact shape for the triumphal march homeward
bound."

Alas, the pigeons and the frosty morning hunts and the delectable
pigeon-pie are gone, no more to return. They are numbered with those
recollections which help to convince me that the boys of to-day don't
have as good times as we youngsters did in the prime of our busy
outdoor world.




CHAPTER II

The Passenger Pigeon

(_Columba Migratoria_)

From "American Ornithology," by Alexander Wilson


This remarkable bird merits a distinguished place in the annals of our
feathered tribes--a claim to which I shall endeavor to do justice;
and, though it would be impossible, in the bounds allotted to this
account, to relate all I have seen and heard of this species, yet no
circumstance shall be omitted with which I am acquainted (however
extraordinary some of these may appear) that may tend to illustrate its
history.

The wild pigeon of the United States inhabits a wide and extensive
region of North America, on this side of the Great Stony Mountains,
beyond which, to the westward, I have not heard of their being seen.
According to Mr. Hutchins, they abound in the country around Hudson's
Bay, where they usually remain as late as December, feeding, when the
ground is covered with snow, on the buds of the juniper. They spread
over the whole of Canada; were seen by Captain Lewis and his party near
the Great Falls of the Missouri, upwards of two thousand five hundred
miles from its mouth, reckoning the meanderings of the river; were also
met with in the interior of Louisiana by Colonel Pike; and extend their
range as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, occasionally visiting or
breeding in almost every quarter of the United States.

But the most remarkable characteristic of these birds is their
associating together, both in their migrations, and also during the
period of incubation, in such prodigious numbers, as almost to surpass
belief; and which has no parallel among any other of the feathered
tribes on the face of the earth, with which all naturalists are
acquainted. These migrations appear to be undertaken rather in quest
of food, than merely to avoid the cold of the climate, since we find
them lingering in the northern regions, around Hudson's Bay, so late
as December; and since their appearance is so casual and irregular,
sometimes not visiting certain districts for several years in any
considerable numbers, while at other times they are innumerable. I
have witnessed these migrations in the Genesee country, often in
Pennsylvania, and also in various parts of Virginia, with amazement;
but all that I had then seen of them were mere straggling parties,
when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld
in our Western forests, in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and the
Indiana territory. These fertile and extensive regions abound with
the nutritious beechnut, which constitutes the chief food of the
wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding
multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens
that, having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees, in an
extensive district, they discover another, at the distance perhaps of
sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning,
and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening,
to their place of general rendezvous, or as it is usually called, the
roosting place. These roosting places are always in the woods, and
sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented
one of these places for some time the appearance it exhibits is
surprising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with
their dung; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed; the surface
strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the
birds clustering one above another; and the trees themselves, for
thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an ax.
The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot; and
numerous places could be pointed out, where, for several years after,
scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance.

When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants, from
considerable distances, visit them in the night with guns, clubs, long
poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In
a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them.
By the Indians, a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an
important source of national profit and dependence for the season; and
all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion. The breeding
place differs from the former in its greater extent. In the western
countries above mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and
often extend, in nearly a straight line across the country for a great
way. Not far from Shelbyville, in the State of Kentucky, about five
years ago, there was one of these breeding places, which stretched
through the woods in nearly a north and south direction; was several
miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards of forty miles in extent!
In this tract almost every tree was furnished with nests, wherever
the branches could accommodate them. The pigeons made their first
appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether, with
their young, before the 29th of May.

As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests,
numerous parties of the inhabitants from all parts of the adjacent
country came with wagons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, many of them
accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for
several days at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that
the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and
that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without
bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees,
eggs, and young squab pigeons, which had been precipitated from above,
and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles
were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from
their nests at pleasure; while from twenty feet upwards to the tops
of the trees the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult
of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring
like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for
now the ax-men were at work cutting down those trees that seemed to be
most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner
that, in their descent, they might bring down several others; by which
means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred
squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost one mass
of fat. On some single trees upwards of one hundred nests were found,
each containing _one_ young only; a circumstance in the history of
this bird not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk
under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall of
large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes above,
and which, in their descent, often destroyed numbers of the birds
themselves; while the clothes of those engaged in traversing the woods
were completely covered with the excrements of the pigeons.

These circumstances were related to me by many of the most respectable
part of the community in that quarter, and were confirmed, in part, by
what I myself witnessed. I passed for several miles through this same
breeding place, where every tree was spotted with nests, the remains of
those above described. In many instances I counted upwards of ninety
nests on a single tree, but the pigeons had abandoned this place for
another, sixty or eighty miles off towards Green River, where they
were said at that time to be equally numerous. From the great numbers
that were constantly passing overhead to or from that quarter, I had
no doubt of the truth of this statement. The mast had been chiefly
consumed in Kentucky, and the pigeons, every morning a little before
sunrise, set out for the Indiana territory, the nearest part of which
was about sixty miles distant. Many of these returned before ten
o'clock, and the great body generally appeared on their return a little
after noon.

I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place
near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with my gun, on my
way to Frankfort, when, about one o'clock, the pigeons, which I had
observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to
return in such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed. Coming
to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a
more uninterrupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They
were flying with great steadiness and rapidity at a height beyond
gunshot in several strata deep, and so close together that could shot
have reached them one discharge could not have failed of bringing down
several individuals. From right to left, far as the eye could reach,
the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming everywhere
equally crowded. Curious to determine how long this appearance would
continue, I took out my watch to note the time, and sat down to,
observe them. It was then half-past one. I sat for more than an hour,
but, instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed
rather to increase both in numbers and rapidity, and, anxious to reach
Frankfort before night, I rose and went on. About four o'clock in
the afternoon I crossed the Kentucky River at the town of Frankfort,
at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous
and as extensive as ever. Long after this I observed them in large
bodies that continued to pass for six or eight minutes, and these
again were followed by other detached bodies, all moving in the same
southeast direction, till after six in the evening. The great breadth
of front which this mighty multitude preserved would seem to intimate
a corresponding breadth of their breeding place, which, by several
gentlemen who had lately passed through part of it, was stated to me
at several miles. It was said to be in Green County, and that the
young began to fly about the middle of March. On the seventeenth of
April, forty-nine miles beyond Danville, and not far from Green River,
I crossed this same breeding place, where the nests, for more than
three miles, spotted every tree; the leaves not being yet out I had a
fair prospect of them, and was really astonished at their numbers. A
few bodies of pigeons lingered yet in different parts of the woods, the
roaring of whose wings were heard in various quarters around me.

All accounts agree in stating that each nest contains only one young
squab. These are so extremely fat that the Indians, and many of the
whites, are accustomed to melt down the fat for domestic purposes as a
substitute for butter and lard. At the time they leave the nest they
are nearly as heavy as the old ones, but become much leaner after they
are turned out to shift for themselves.

It is universally asserted in the western countries that the pigeons,
though they have only one young at a time, breed thrice, and sometimes
four times in the same season; the circumstances already mentioned
render this highly probable. It is also worthy of observation that
this takes place during the period when acorns, beechnuts, etc., are
scattered about in the greatest abundance and mellowed by the frost.
But they are not confined to these alone; buckwheat, hempseed, Indian
corn, hollyberries, hackberries, huckleberries, and many others furnish
them with abundance at almost all seasons. The acorns of the live
oak are also eagerly sought after by these birds, and rice has been
frequently found in individuals killed many hundred miles to the
northward of the nearest rice plantation. The vast quantity of mast
which these multitudes consume is a serious loss to the bears, pigs,
squirrels, and other dependents on the fruits of the forest. I have
taken from the crop of a single wild pigeon a good handful of the
kernels of beechnuts, intermixed with acorns and chestnuts. To form a
rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these immense flocks
let us first attempt to calculate the numbers of that above mentioned,
as seen in passing between Frankfort and the Indiana territory. If we
suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe it
to have been much more), and that it moved at the rate of one mile in
a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its
whole length two hundred and forty miles. Again, supposing that each
square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons, the square
yards in the whole space, multiplied by three, would give two thousand
two hundred and thirty millions, two hundred and seventy-two thousand
pigeons!--an almost inconceivable multitude, and yet probably far below
the actual amount. Computing each of these to consume half a pint of
mast daily, the whole quantity at this rate would equal seventeen
millions, four hundred and twenty-four thousand bushels per day! Heaven
has wisely and graciously given to these birds rapidity of flight and
a disposition to range over vast uncultivated tracts of the earth,
otherwise they must have perished in the districts where they resided,
or devoured up the whole productions of agriculture, as well as those
of the forests.

A few observations on the mode of flight of these birds must not be
omitted. The appearance of large detached bodies of them in the air
and the various evolutions they display are strikingly picturesque and
interesting. In descending the Ohio by myself in the month of February
I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aërial manoeuvres. A
column, eight or ten miles in length, would appear from Kentucky,
high in air, steering across to Indiana. The leaders of this great
body would sometimes gradually vary their course until it formed a
large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing the
exact route of their predecessors. This would continue sometimes long
after both extremities were beyond the reach of sight, so that the
whole, with its glittery undulations, marked a space on the face of
the heavens resembling the windings of a vast and majestic river.
When this bend became very great the birds, as if sensible of the
unnecessary circuitous course they were taking, suddenly changed their
direction, so that what was in column before, became an immense front,
straightening all its indentures, until it swept the heavens in one
vast and infinitely extended line. Other lesser bodies also united with
each other as they happened to approach with such ease and elegance
of evolution, forming new figures, and varying these as they united
or separated, that I never was tired of contemplating them. Sometimes
a hawk would make a sweep on a particular part of the column from
a great height, when, almost as quick as lightning, that part shot
downwards out of the common track, but soon rising again, continued
advancing at the same height as before. This inflection was continued
by those behind, who, on arriving at this point, dived down, almost
perpendicularly, to a great depth, and rising, followed the exact path
of those that went before. As these vast bodies passed over the river
near me, the surface of the water, which was before smooth as glass,
appeared marked with innumerable dimples, occasioned by the dropping of
their dung, resembling the commencement of a shower of large drops of
rain or hail.

Happening to go ashore one charming afternoon, to purchase some milk at
a house that stood near the river, and while talking with the people
within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing
roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which, on the first moment, I
took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house and everything around
in destruction. The people, observing my surprise, coolly said: "It
is only the pigeons"; and on running out I beheld a flock, thirty or
forty yards in width, sweeping along very low between the house and the
mountain, or height, that formed the second bank of the river. These
continued passing for more than a quarter of an hour, and at length
varied their bearing so as to pass over the mountain, behind which they
disappeared before the rear came up.

In the Atlantic States, though they never appear in such unparalleled
multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous, and great havoc is
then made amongst them with the gun, the clap net, and various other
implements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that
the pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners
rise _en masse_, the clap nets are spread out on suitable situations,
commonly on an open height in an old buckwheat field; four or five
live pigeons, with their eyelids sewed up, are fastened on a movable
stick--a small hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the
distance of forty or fifty yards--by the pulling of a string the stick
on which the pigeons rest is alternately elevated and depressed, which
produces a fluttering of their wings similar to that of birds just
alighting; this being perceived by the passing flocks they descend with
great rapidity, and, finding corn, buckwheat, etc., strewed about,
begin to feed, and are instantly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by
the net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even thirty dozen have been
caught at one sweep. Meantime the air is darkened with large bodies
of them moving in various directions; the woods also swarm with them
in search of acorns; and the thundering of musketry is perpetual on
all sides from morning to night. Wagon loads of them are poured into
market, where they sell from fifty to twenty-five and even twelve cents
per dozen; and pigeons become the order of the day at dinner, breakfast
and supper, until the very name becomes sickening. When they have been
kept alive and fed for some time on corn and buckwheat their flesh
acquires great superiority; but, in their common state, they are dry
and blackish and far inferior to the full grown young ones or squabs.

The nest of the wild pigeon is formed of a few dry slender twigs,
carelessly put together, and with so little concavity that the young
one, when half grown, can easily be seen from below. The eggs are pure
white. Great numbers of hawks, and sometimes the bald eagle himself,
hover above those breeding places, and seize the old or the young
from the nest amidst the rising multitudes, and with the most daring
effrontery. The young, when beginning to fly, confine themselves to
the under part of the tall woods where there is no brush, and where
nuts and acorns are abundant, searching among the leaves for mast,
and appear like a prodigious torrent rolling through the woods, every
one striving to be in the front. Vast numbers of them are shot while
in this situation. A person told me that he once rode furiously into
one of these rolling multitudes and picked up thirteen pigeons which
had been trampled to death by his horse's feet. In a few minutes
they will beat the whole nuts from a tree with their wings, while
all is a scramble, both above and below, for the same. They have the
same cooing notes common to domestic pigeons, but much less of their
gesticulations. In some flocks you will find nothing but young ones,
which are easily distinguishable by their motley dress. In others they
will be mostly females, and again great multitudes of males with few
or no females. I cannot account for this in any other way than that,
during the time of incubation, the males are exclusively engaged in
procuring food, both for themselves and their mates, and the young,
being yet unable to undertake these extensive excursions, associate
together accordingly. But even in winter I know of several species
of birds who separate in this manner, particularly the red-winged
starling, among whom thousands of old males may be found with few or no
young or females along with them.

Stragglers from these immense armies settle in almost every part of
the country, particularly among the beech woods and in the pine and
hemlock woods of the eastern and northern parts of the continent. Mr.
Pennant informs us that they breed near Moose Fort, at Hudson's Bay, in
N. latitude 51 degrees, and I myself have seen the remains of a large
breeding place as far south as the country of the Choctaws, in latitude
32 degrees. In the former of these places they are said to remain until
December; from which circumstance it is evident that they are not
regular in their migrations like many other species, but rove about as
scarcity of food urges them. Every spring, however, as well as fall,
more or less of them are seen in the neighborhood of Philadelphia; but
it is only once in several years that they appear in such formidable
bodies; and this commonly when the snows are heavy to the north, the
winter here more than usually mild, and acorns, etc., abundant.

The passenger pigeon is sixteen inches long, and twenty-four inches in
extent; bill, black; nostril, covered by a high rounding protuberance;
eye, brilliant fiery orange; orbit, or space surrounding it, purplish
flesh-colored skin; head, upper part of the neck and chin, a fine
slate blue, lightest on the chin; throat, breast, and sides, as far as
the thighs, a reddish hazel; lower part of the neck and sides of the
same, resplendent changeable gold, green, and purplish crimson, the
last named most predominant; the ground color, slate; the plumage of
this part is of a peculiar structure, ragged at the ends; belly and
vent, white; lower part of the breast, fading into a pale vinaceous
red; thighs, the same; legs and feet, lake, seamed with white; back,
rump, and tail-coverts, dark slate, spotted on the shoulders with
a few scattered marks of black; the scapulars, tinged with brown;
greater coverts, light slate; primaries and secondaries, dull black,
the former tipped and edged with brownish white; tail, long, and
greatly cuneiform, all the feathers tapering towards the point, the
two middle ones plain deep black, the other five, on each side, hoary
white, lightest near the tips, deepening into bluish near the bases,
where each is crossed on the inner vane with a broad spot of black,
and nearer the root with another of ferruginous; primaries edged with
white; bastard wing, black.

The female is about half an inch shorter, and an inch less in extent;
breast, cinerous brown; upper part of the neck, inclining to ash; the
spot of changeable gold, green, and carmine, much less, and not so
brilliant; tail coverts, brownish slate; naked orbits, slate colored;
in all other respects like the male in color, but less vivid and more
tinged with brown; the eye not so brilliant an orange. In both the tail
has only twelve feathers.

[Illustration: PASSENGER PIGEON (_Columba Migratoria_)

Upper bird, female; lower, male

_Reproduced from the John J. Audubon Plate_]





CHAPTER III

The Passenger Pigeon

From "Ornithological Biography," by John James Audubon


The Passenger Pigeon, or, as it is usually named in America, the Wild
Pigeon, moves with extreme rapidity, propelling itself by quickly
repeated flaps of the wings, which it brings more or less near to the
body, according to the degree of velocity which is required. Like
the domestic pigeon, it often flies, during the love season, in a
circling manner, supporting itself with both wings angularly elevated,
in which position it keeps them until it is about to alight. Now and
then, during these circular flights, the tips of the primary quills
of each wing are made to strike against each other, producing a smart
rap, which may be heard at a distance of thirty or forty yards. Before
alighting, the wild pigeon, like the Carolina parrot and a few other
species of birds, breaks the force of its flight by repeated flappings,
as if apprehensive of receiving injury from coming too suddenly into
contact with the branch or the spot of ground on which it intends to
settle.

I have commenced my description of this species with the above account
of its flight, because the most important facts connected with its
habits relate to its migrations. These are entirely owing to the
necessity of procuring food, and are not performed with the view of
escaping the severity of a northern latitude, or of seeking a southern
one for the purpose of breeding. They consequently do not take place at
any fixed period or season of the year. Indeed, it sometimes happens
that a continuance of a sufficient supply of food in one district will
keep these birds absent from another for years. I know, at least, to a
certainty, that in Kentucky they remained for several years constantly,
and were nowhere else to be found. They all suddenly disappeared one
season when the mast was exhausted and did not return for a long
period. Similar facts have been observed in other States.

Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an
astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved
by facts well-known in America. Thus, pigeons have been killed in
the neighborhood of New York, with their crops full of rice, which
they must have collected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these
districts being the nearest in which they could possibly have procured
a supply of that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so great
that they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must in
this case have traveled between three hundred and four hundred miles in
six hours, which shows their power of speed to be at an average about
one mile in a minute. A velocity such as this would enable one of these
birds, were it so inclined, to visit the European continent in less
than three days.

This great power of flight is seconded by as great a power of vision,
which enables them, as they travel at that swift rate, to inspect the
country below, discover their food with facility, and thus attain the
object for which their journey has been undertaken. This I have also
proved to be the case, by having observed them, when passing over a
sterile part of the country, or one scantily furnished with food suited
to them, keep high in the air, flying with an extended front, so as
to enable them to survey hundreds of acres at once. On the contrary,
when the land is richly covered with food, or the trees abundantly hung
with mast, they fly low, in order to discover the part most plentifully
supplied.

Their body is of an elongated oval form, steered by a long, well-plumed
tail, and propelled by well-set wings, the muscles of which are very
large and powerful for the size of the bird. When an individual is seen
gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a
thought, and on trying to see it again, the eye searches in vain; the
bird is gone.

The multitudes of wild pigeons in our woods are astonishing. Indeed,
after having viewed them so often, and under so many circumstances,
I even now feel inclined to pause, and assure myself that what I am
going to relate is fact. Yet I have seen it all, and that, too, in the
company of persons who, like myself, were struck with amazement.

In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of
the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens a few
miles beyond Hardensburgh, I observed the pigeons flying from northeast
to southwest, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them
before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might
pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated
myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot
for every flock that passed. In a short time, finding the task which
I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless
multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that one
hundred and sixty-three had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled
on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally
filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an
eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and
the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.

Whilst waiting for dinner at Young's Inn, at the confluence of Salt
River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still
going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and
the beechwood forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird
alighted; for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in the
neighborhood. They consequently flew so high, that different trials to
reach them with a capital rifle proved ineffectual; nor did the reports
disturb them in the least. I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty
of their aërial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear
of the flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder,
they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the
center. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating
and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with
inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a
vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within
their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic
serpent.

Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh
fifty-five miles. The pigeons were still passing in undiminished
numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The
people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men
and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which there flew lower
as they passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or
more, the population fed on no other flesh than that of pigeons, and
talked of nothing but pigeons. The atmosphere, during this time, was
strongly impregnated with the peculiar odor which emanates from the
species.

It is extremely interesting to see flock after flock performing
exactly the same evolutions which had been traced as it were in the
air by a preceding flock. Thus, should a hawk have charged on a group
at a certain spot, the angles, curves and undulations that have been
described by the birds, in their efforts to escape from the dreaded
talons of the plunderer, are undeviatingly followed by the next group
that comes up. Should the bystander happen to witness one of these
affrays, and, struck with the rapidity and elegance of the motions
exhibited, feel desirous of seeing them repeated, his wishes will be
gratified if he only remain in the place until the next group comes up.

It may not, perhaps, be out of place to attempt an estimate of the
number of pigeons contained in one of those mighty flocks, and of
the quantity of food daily consumed by its members. The inquiry will
tend to show the astonishing beauty of the great Author of Nature in
providing for the wants of His creatures. Let us take a column of one
mile in breadth, which is far below the average size, and suppose it
passing over us without interruption for three hours, at the rate
mentioned above of one mile in a minute. This will give a parallelogram
of one hundred and eighty by one, covering one hundred and eighty
square miles. Allowing two pigeons to the square yard, we have one
billion, one hundred and fifty millions, one hundred and thirty-six
thousand pigeons in one flock. As every pigeon daily consumes fully
half a pint of food, the quantity necessary for supplying this vast
multitude must be eight millions, seven hundred and twelve thousand
bushels per day.

As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them
to alight, they fly around in circles, reviewing the country below.
During their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they
form exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now
displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds
come simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass
of rich deep purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for
a moment are lost among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen
gliding aloft. They now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly
alarmed, they take to wing, producing by the flapping of their wings
a noise like the roar of distant thunder, and sweep through the
forests to see if danger is near. Hunger, however, soon brings them
to the ground. When alighted, they are seen industriously throwing up
the withered leaves in quest of the fallen mast. The rear ranks are
continually rising, passing over the main body, and alighting in front,
in such rapid succession, that the whole flock seems still on the wing.
The quantity of ground thus swept is astonishing, and so completely has
it been cleared, that the gleaner who might follow in their rear would
find his labor completely lost. Whilst feeding, their avidity is at
times so great that in attempting to swallow a large acorn or nut, they
are seen gasping for a long while, as if in agonies of suffocation.

On such occasions, when the woods are filled with these pigeons,
they are killed in immense numbers, although no apparent diminution
ensues. About the middle of the day, after their repast is finished,
they settle on the trees, to enjoy rest, and digest their food. On the
ground they walk with ease, as well as on the branches, frequently
jerking their beautiful tail, and moving the neck backwards and
forwards in the most graceful manner. As the sun begins to sink beneath
the horizon, they depart _en masse_ for the roosting place, which not
infrequently is hundreds of miles distant, as has been ascertained by
persons who have kept an account of their arrivals and departures.

Let us now, kind reader, inspect their place of nightly rendezvous.
One of these curious roosting places, on the banks of the Green River
in Kentucky, I repeatedly visited. It was, as is always the case, in
a portion of the forest where the trees were of great magnitude, and
where there was little underwood. I rode through it upwards of forty
miles, and, crossing it in different parts, found its average breadth
to be rather more than three miles. My first view of it was about a
fortnight subsequent to the period when they had made choice of it, and
I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset. Few pigeons were then
to be seen, but a great number of persons, with horses and wagons,
guns and ammunition, had already established encampments on the borders.

Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more than a
hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fattened
on the pigeons which were to be slaughtered. Here and there, the people
employed in plucking and salting what had already been procured, were
seen sitting in the midst of large piles of these birds. The dung lay
several inches deep, covering the whole extent of the roosting place,
like a bed of snow. Many trees two feet in diameter, I observed, were
broken off at no great distance from the ground; and the branches of
many of the largest and tallest had given way, as if the forest had
been swept by a tornado. Everything proved to me that the number of
birds resorting to this part of the forest must be immense beyond
conception. As the period of their arrival approached, their foes
anxiously prepared to receive them. Some were furnished with iron
pots containing sulphur, others with torches of pine knots, many with
poles, and the rest with guns. The sun was lost to our view, yet not
a pigeon had arrived. Everything was ready, and all eyes were gazing
on the clear sky, which appeared in glimpses amidst the tall trees.
Suddenly there burst forth a general cry of "Here they come!" The
noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a hard gale
at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As
the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that
surprised me. Thousands were seen knocked down by the pole-men. The
birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted, and a magnificent,
as well as wonderful and almost terrifying sight presented itself.
The pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, one above
another, until solid masses as large as hogsheads were formed on the
branches all round. Here and there the perches gave way under the
weight with a crash, and, falling to the ground destroyed hundreds of
the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick
was loaded. It was a scene of uproar and confusion. I found it quite
useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons who were nearest
to me. Even the reports of the guns were seldom heard, and I was made
aware of the firing only by seeing the shooters reloading.

No one dared venture within the line of devastation. The hogs had been
penned up in due time, the picking up of the dead and wounded being
left for the next morning's employment. The pigeons were constantly
coming, and it was past midnight before I perceived a decrease in the
number of those that arrived. The uproar continued the whole night; and
as I was anxious to know to what distance the sound reached, I sent
off a man, accustomed to perambulate the forest, who, returning two
hours afterwards, informed me he had heard it distinctly when three
miles distant from the spot. Toward the approach of day, the noise in
some measure subsided, long before objects were distinguishable, the
pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from that in
which they had arrived the evening before, and at sunrise all that were
able to fly had disappeared. The howlings of the wolves now reached our
ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears, raccoons, opossums, and
pole-cats were seen sneaking off, whilst eagles and hawks of different
species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures, came to supplant them and
enjoy their share of the spoil.

It was then that the authors of all this devastation began their entry
amongst the dead, the dying and the mangled. 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.

Persons unacquainted with these birds might naturally conclude that
such dreadful havoc would soon put an end to the species. But I have
satisfied myself, by long observation, that nothing but the gradual
diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease, as they not
infrequently quadruple their numbers yearly, and always at least double
it. In 1805 I saw schooners loaded in bulk with pigeons caught up
the Hudson River, coming into the wharf at New York, when the birds
sold for a cent apiece. I knew a man in Pennsylvania, who caught and
killed upward of five hundred dozens in a clap net in one day, sweeping
sometimes twenty dozens or more at a single haul. In the month of
March, 1830, they were so abundant in the markets of New York, that
piles of them met the eye in every direction. I have seen the negroes
at the United States' Salines or Saltworks of Shawnee Town, wearied
with killing pigeons, as they alighted to drink the water issuing from
the leading pipes, for weeks at a time; and yet in 1826, in Louisiana,
I saw congregated flocks of these birds as numerous as ever I had seen
them before, during a residence of nearly thirty years in the United
States.

The breeding of the wild pigeons, and the places chosen for that
purpose, are points of great interest. The time is not much influenced
by season, and the place selected is where food is most plentiful and
most attainable, and always at a convenient distance from water. Forest
trees of great height are those in which the pigeons form their nests.
Thither the countless myriads resort, and prepare to fulfill one of
the great laws of nature. At this period the note of the pigeon is a
soft coo-coo-coo-coo much shorter than that of the domestic species.
The common notes resemble the monosyllables kee-kee-kee-kee, the first
being the loudest, the others gradually diminishing in power. The
male assumes a pompous demeanor, and follows the female whether on
the ground or on the branches, with spread tail and drooping wings,
which it rubs against the part over which it is moving. The body is
elevated, the throat swells, the eyes sparkle. He continues his notes,
and now and then rises on the wing, and flies a few yards to approach
the fugitive and timorous female. Like the domestic pigeon and other
species, they caress each other by billing, in which action, the bill
of the one is introduced transversely into that of the other, and both
parties alternately disgorge the contents of their crops by repeated
efforts. These preliminary affairs are soon settled, and the pigeons
commence their nests in general peace and harmony. They are composed
of a few dry twigs, crossing each other, and are supported by forks
of the branches. On the same tree from fifty to a hundred nests may
frequently be seen: I might say a much greater number, were I not
anxious, kind reader, that however wonderful my account of the wild
pigeons is, you may not feel disposed to refer it to the marvelous. The
eggs are two in number, of a broadly elliptical form, and pure white.
During incubation, the male supplies the female with food. Indeed, the
tenderness and affection displayed by these birds toward their mates,
are in the highest degree striking. It is a remarkable fact that each
brood generally consists of a male and a female.

Here again, the tyrant of the creation, man, interferes, disturbing
the harmony of this peaceful scene. As the young birds grow up, their
enemies armed with axes, reach the spot, to seize and destroy all
they can. The trees are felled, and made to fall in such a way that
the cutting of one causes the overthrow of another, or shakes the
neighboring trees so much, that the young pigeons, or squabs, as they
are named, are violently hurled to the ground. In this manner, also,
immense quantities are destroyed.

The young are fed by the parents in the manner described above; in
other words, the old bird introduces its bill into the mouth of the
young one in a transverse manner, or with the back of each mandible
opposite the separations of the mandibles of the young bird, and
disgorges the contents of its crop. As soon as the young birds are
able to shift for themselves, they leave their parents, and continue
separate until they attain maturity. By the end of six months they are
capable of reproducing their species.

The flesh of the wild pigeon is of a dark color, but affords tolerable
eating. That of young birds from the nest is much esteemed. The skin
is covered with small white filmy scales. The feathers fall off at
the least touch, as has been remarked to be the case in the Carolina
Turtle. I have only to add that this species, like others of the same
genus, immerses its head up to the eyes while drinking.

In March, 1830, I bought about three hundred and fifty of these birds
in the market of New York, at four cents apiece. Most of these I
carried alive to England, and distributed among several noblemen,
presenting some at the same time to the Zoölogical Society.


ADULT MALE

Bill--straight, of ordinary length, rather slender, broader than deep
at the base, with a tumid, fleshy covering above, compressed toward the
end, rather obtuse; upper mandible slightly declinate at the tip, edges
inflected. Head--small; neck, slender; body, rather full. Legs--short
and strong; tarsus, rather rounded; anteriorly scutellate; toes,
slightly webbed at the base; claws, short, depressed, obtuse.

Plumage--blended on the neck and under parts, compact on the back.
Wings--long, the second quill longest. Tail--graduated, of twelve
tapering feathers.

Bill--black. Iris--bright red. Feet--carmine purple, claws blackish.
Head--above and on the sides light blue. Throat, fore-neck, breast,
and sides--light brownish-red, the rest of the under parts white.
Lower part of the neck behind, and along the sides, changing to gold,
emerald green, and rich crimson. The general color of the upper parts
is grayish-blue, some of the wing-coverts marked with a black spot.
Quills and larger wing-coverts blackish, the primary quills bluish in
the outer web, the larger coverts whitish at the tip. The two middle
feathers of the tail black, the rest pale blue at the base, becoming
white toward the end.

Length, 16-1/4 inches; extent of wings, 25; bill, along the ridge,
5/6, along the gap, 1-1/12; tarsus, 1-1/4 middle toe, 1-1/3.


ADULT FEMALE

The colors of the female are much duller than those of the male,
although their distribution is the same. The breast is light
grayish-brown, the upper parts pale reddish-brown, tinged with blue.
The changeable spot on the neck is of less extent, and the eye of a
somewhat duller red, as are the feet.

Length, 15 inches; extent of wings, 23; bill, along the ridge, 3/4;
along the gap, 5/6.




CHAPTER IV

As James Fenimore Cooper Saw It


One of the most graphic descriptions ever written of a pigeon flight
and slaughter is to be found in Cooper's novel, "The Pioneers," from
which I make the following extracts:

"See, cousin Bess! see, Duke, the pigeon-roosts of the south have
broken up! They are growing more thick every instant. Here is a flock
that the eye cannot see the end of. There is food enough in it to
keep the army of Xerxes for a month and feathers enough to make beds
for the whole country.... The reports of the firearms became rapid,
whole volleys rising from the plain, as flocks of more than ordinary
numbers darted over the opening, shadowing the field like a cloud;
and then the light smoke of a single piece would issue from among the
leafless bushes on the mountain, as death was hurled on the retreat of
the affrighted birds, who were rising from a volley, in a vain effort
to escape. Arrows and missiles of every kind were in the midst of the
flocks; and so numerous were the birds, and so low did they take their
flight, that even long poles, in the hands of those on the sides of the
mountain, were used to strike them to the earth.... So prodigious was
the number of the birds, that the scattering fire of the guns, with
the hurtling missiles, and the cries of the boys, had no other effect
than to break off small flocks from the immense masses that continued
to dart along the valley, as if the whole of the feathered tribe were
pouring through that one pass. None pretended to collect the game,
which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the
very ground with the fluttering victims."

The slaughter described finally ended with a grand finale when an old
swivel gun was "loaded with handsful of bird-shot," and fired into the
mass of pigeons with such fatal effect that there were birds enough
killed and wounded on the ground to feed the whole settlement.

The following description is from "The Chainbearer," also by J.
Fenimore Cooper. The region of which he writes is in Central New York.

"I scarce know how to describe the remarkable scene. As we drew near to
the summit of the hill, pigeons began to be seen fluttering among the
branches over our heads, as individuals are met along the roads that
lead into the suburbs of a large town. We had probably seen a thousand
birds glancing around among the trees, before we came in view of the
roost itself. The numbers increased as we drew nearer, and presently
the forest was alive with them.

"The fluttering was incessant, and often startling as we passed ahead,
our march producing a movement in the living crowd, that really became
confounding. Every tree was literally covered with nests, many having
at least a thousand of these frail tenements on their branches, and
shaded by the leaves. They often touched each other, a wonderful degree
of order prevailing among the hundreds of thousands of families that
were here assembled.

"The place had the odor of a fowl-house, and squabs just fledged
sufficiently to trust themselves in short flights, were fluttering
around us in all directions, in tens of thousands. To these were to
be added the parents of the young race endeavoring to protect them
and guide them in a way to escape harm. Although the birds rose as
we approached, and the woods just around us seemed fairly alive with
pigeons, our presence produced no general commotion; every one of
the feathered throng appearing to be so much occupied with its own
concerns, as to take little heed of the visit of a party of strangers,
though of a race usually so formidable to their own.

"The masses moved before us precisely as a crowd of human beings yields
to a pressure or a danger on any given point; the vacuum created by its
passage filling in its rear as the water of the ocean flows into the
track of the keel.

"The effect on most of us was confounding, and I can only compare the
sensation produced on myself by the extraordinary tumult to that a
man experiences at finding himself suddenly placed in the midst of an
excited throng of human beings. The unnatural disregard of our persons
manifested by the birds greatly heightened the effect, and caused me
to feel as if some unearthly influence reigned in the place. It was
strange, indeed, to be in a mob of the feathered race, that scarce
exhibited a consciousness of one's presence. The pigeons seemed a world
of themselves, and too much occupied with their own concerns to take
heed of matters that lay beyond them.

"Not one of our party spoke for several minutes. Astonishment seemed
to hold us all tongue-tied, and we moved slowly forward into the
fluttering throng, silent, absorbed, and full of admiration of the
works of the Creator. It was not easy to hear each others' voices when
we did speak, the incessant fluttering of wings filling the air. Nor
were the birds silent in other respects.

"The pigeon is not a noisy creature, but a million crowded together on
the summit of one hill, occupying a space of less than a mile square,
did not leave the forest in its ordinary impressive stillness. As we
advanced, I offered my arm, almost unconsciously again to Dus, and
she took it with the same abstracted manner as that in which it had
been held forth for her acceptance. In this relation to each other, we
continued to follow the grave-looking Onondago, as he moved, still
deeper and deeper, into the midst of the fluttering tumult.

       *       *       *       *       *

"While standing wondering at the extraordinary scene around us, a noise
was heard rising above that of the incessant fluttering which I can
only liken to that of the trampling of thousands of horses on a beaten
road. This noise at first sounded distant, but it increased rapidly
in proximity and power, until it came rolling in upon us, among the
tree-tops, like a crash of thunder. The air was suddenly darkened,
and the place where we stood as somber as a dusky twilight. At the
same instant, all the pigeons near us, that had been on their nests,
appeared to fall out of them, and the space immediately above our heads
was at once filled with birds.

"Chaos itself could hardly have represented greater confusion, or a
greater uproar. As for the birds, they now seemed to disregard our
presence entirely; possibly they could not see us on account of their
own numbers, for they fluttered in between Dus and myself, hitting us
with their wings, and at times appearing as if about to bury us in
avalanches of pigeons. Each of us caught one at least in our hands,
while Chainbearer and the Indian took them in some numbers, letting one
prisoner go as another was taken. In a word, we seemed to be in a world
of pigeons. This part of the scene may have lasted a minute, when the
space around us was suddenly cleared, the birds glancing upward among
the branches of the trees, disappearing among the foliage. All this was
the effect produced by the return of the female birds, which had been
off at a distance, some twenty miles at least, to feed on beechnuts,
and which now assumed the places of the males on the nests; the latter
taking a flight to get their meal in their turn.

"I have since had the curiosity to make a sort of an estimate of the
number of the birds that must have come in upon the roost, in that, to
us, memorable moment. Such a calculation, as a matter of course, must
be very vague, though one may get certain principles by estimating
the size of a flock by the known rapidity of the flight, and other
similar means; and I remember that Frank Malbone and myself supposed
that a million of birds must have come in on that return, and as many
departed! As the pigeon is a very voracious bird, the question is apt
to present itself, where food is obtained for so many mouths; but, when
we remember the vast extent of the American forests, this difficulty
is at once met. Admitting that the colony we visited contained many
millions of birds, and, counting old and young, I have no doubt it did,
there was probably a fruit-bearing tree for each, within an hour's
flight from that very spot!

"Such is the scale on which Nature labors in the wilderness! I have
seen insects fluttering in the air at particular seasons, and at
particular places, until they formed little clouds; a sight every one
must have witnessed on many occasions; and as those insects appeared,
on their diminished scale, so did the pigeons appear to us at the roost
of Mooseridge."




CHAPTER V

The Wild Pigeon of North America

By Chief Pokagon,[A] from "The Chautauquan," November, 1895. Vol. 22.
No. 20.

[Footnote A: Simon Pokagon, of Michigan, is a full-blooded Indian, the
last Pottawattomie chief of the Pokagon band. He is author of the "Red
Man's Greeting," and has been called by the press the "Redskin poet,
bard, and Longfellow of his race." His father, chief before him, sold
the site of Chicago and the surrounding country to the United States
in 1833 for three cents an acre. He was the first red man to visit
President Lincoln after his inauguration. In a letter written home at
the time he said: "I have met Lincoln, the great chief; he is very
tall, has a sad face, but he is a good man, I saw it in his eyes and
felt it in his hand-shaking. He will help us get payment for Chicago
land." Soon after $39,000 was paid. In 1874 he visited President Grant.
He said of him: "I expected he would put on military importance, but
he treated me kindly, give me a cigar, and we smoked the pipe of peace
together." In 1893 he procured judgment against the United States for
over $100,000 still due on the sale of the Chicago land by his father.
He was honored on Chicago Day at the World's Fair by first ringing the
new Bell of Liberty and speaking in behalf of his race to the greatest
crowd ever assembled on earth. After his speech "Glory Hallelujah" was
sung before the bell for the first time on the Fair grounds.]


The migratory or wild pigeon of North America was known by our race as
_O-me-me-wog_. Why the European race did not accept that name was, no
doubt, because the bird so much resembled the domesticated pigeon; they
naturally called it a wild pigeon, as they called us wild men.

This remarkable bird differs from the dove or domesticated pigeon,
which was imported into this country, in the grace of its long neck,
its slender bill and legs, and its narrow wings. Its tail is eight
inches long, having twelve feathers, white on the under side. The
two center feathers are longest, while five arranged on either side
diminished gradually each one-half inch in length, giving to the
tail when spread an almost conical appearance. Its back and upper
part of the wings and head are a darkish blue, with a silken velvety
appearance. Its neck is resplendent in gold and green with royal purple
intermixed. Its breast is reddish-brown, fading toward the belly into
white. Its tail is tipped with white, intermixed with bluish-black. The
female is one inch shorter than the male, and her color less vivid.

It was proverbial with our fathers that if the Great Spirit in His
wisdom could have created a more elegant bird in plumage, form, and
movement, He never did. When a young man I have stood for hours
admiring the movements of these birds. I have seen them fly in unbroken
lines from the horizon, one line succeeding another from morning until
night, moving their unbroken columns like an army of trained soldiers
pushing to the front, while detached bodies of these birds appeared
in different parts of the heavens, pressing forward in haste like raw
recruits preparing for battle. At other times I have seen them move in
one unbroken column for hours across the sky, like some great river,
ever varying in hue; and as the mighty stream, sweeping on at sixty
miles an hour, reached some deep valley, it would pour its living mass
headlong down hundreds of feet, sounding as though a whirlwind was
abroad in the land. I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America
and regarded the descending torrents in wonder and astonishment, yet
never have my astonishment, wonder, and admiration been so stirred as
when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors
from heaven.

While feeding, they always have guards on duty, to give alarm of
danger. It is made by the watch-bird as it takes its flight, beating
its wings together in quick succession, sounding like the rolling beat
of a snare drum. Quick as thought each bird repeats the alarm with a
thundering sound, as the flock struggles to rise, leading a stranger to
think a young cyclone is then being born.

... About the middle of May, 1850, while in the fur trade, I was
camping on the head waters of the Manistee River in Michigan. One
morning on leaving my wigwam I was startled by hearing a gurgling,
rumbling sound, as though an army of horses laden with sleigh bells
was advancing through the deep forests towards me. As I listened more
intently I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was
distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm and beautiful.
Nearer and nearer came the strange commingling sounds of sleigh bells,
mixed with the rumbling of an approaching storm. While I gazed in
wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front
millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season. They passed like
a cloud through the branches of the high trees, through the underbrush
and over the ground, apparently overturning every leaf. Statue-like I
stood, half-concealed by cedar boughs. They fluttered all about me,
lighting on my head and shoulders; gently I caught two in my hands and
carefully concealed them under my blanket.

I now began to realize they were mating, preparatory to nesting. It
was an event which I had long hoped to witness; so I sat down and
carefully watched their movements, amid the greatest tumult. I tried to
understand their strange language, and why they all chatted in concert.
In the course of the day the great on-moving mass passed by me, but
the trees were still filled with them sitting in pairs in convenient
crotches of the limbs, now and then gently fluttering their half-spread
wings and uttering to their mates those strange, bell-like wooing notes
which I had mistaken for the ringing of bells in the distance.

On the third day after, this chattering ceased and all were busy
carrying sticks with which they were building nests in the same
crotches of the limbs they had occupied in pairs the day before. On the
morning of the fourth day their nests were finished and eggs laid. The
hen birds occupied the nests in the morning, while the male birds went
out into the surrounding country to feed, returning about ten o'clock,
taking the nests, while the hens went out to feed, returning about
three o'clock. Again changing nests, the male birds went out the second
time to feed, returning at sundown. The same routine was pursued each
day until the young ones were hatched and nearly half grown, at which
time all the parent birds left the brooding grounds about daylight. On
the morning of the eleventh day, after the eggs were laid, I found the
nesting grounds strewn with egg shells, convincing me that the young
were hatched. In thirteen days more the parent birds left their young
to shift for themselves, flying to the east about sixty miles, when
they again nested. The female lays but one egg during the same nesting.

Both sexes secrete in their crops milk or curd with which they feed
their young, until they are nearly ready to fly, when they stuff them
with mast and such other raw material as they themselves eat, until
their crops exceed their bodies in size, giving to them an appearance
of two birds with one head. Within two days after the stuffing they
become a mass of fat--"a squab." At this period the parent bird drives
them from the nests to take care of themselves, while they fly off
within a day or two, sometimes hundreds of miles, and again nest.

It has been well established that these birds look after and take care
of all orphan squabs whose parents have been killed or are missing.
These birds are long-lived, having been known to live twenty-five years
caged. When food is abundant they nest each month in the year.

Their principal food is the mast of the forest, except when curd is
being secreted in their crops, at which time they denude the country
of snails and worms for miles around the nesting grounds. Because they
nest in such immense bodies, they are frequently compelled to fly from
fifty to one hundred miles for food.

During my early life I learned that these birds in spring and fall
were seen in their migrations from the Atlantic to the Mississippi
River. This knowledge, together with my personal observation of their
countless numbers, led me to believe they were almost as inexhaustible
as the great ocean itself. Of course I had witnessed the passing away
of the deer, buffalo, and elk, but I looked upon them as local in their
habits, while these birds spanned the continent, frequently nesting
beyond the reach of cruel man.

Between 1840 and 1880 I visited in the States of Ohio, Indiana, and
Michigan many brooding places that were from twenty to thirty miles
long and from three to four miles wide, every tree in its limits being
spotted with nests. Yet, notwithstanding their countless numbers, great
endurance, and long life, they have almost entirely disappeared from
our forests. We strain our eyes in spring and autumn in vain to catch
a glimpse of these pilgrims. White men tell us they have moved in a
body to the Rocky Mountain region, where they are as plenty as they
were here, but when we ask red men, who are familiar with the mountain
country, about them, they shake their heads in disbelief.

A pigeon nesting was always a great source of revenue to our people.
Whole tribes would wigwam in the brooding places. They seldom killed
the old birds, but made great preparation to secure their young, out
of which the squaws made squab butter and smoked and dried them by
thousands for future use. Yet, under our manner of securing them, they
continued to increase.

White men commenced netting them for market about the year 1840. These
men were known as professional pigeoners, from the fact that they
banded themselves together, so as to keep in telegraphic communication
with these great moving bodies. In this they became so expert as to be
almost continually on the borders of their brooding places. As they
were always prepared with trained stool-pigeons and flyers, which
they carried with them, they were enabled to call down the passing
flocks and secure as many by net as they were able to pack in ice and
ship to market. In the year 1848 there were shipped from Catteraugus
County, N. Y., eighty tons of these birds; and from that time to 1878
the wholesale slaughter continued to increase, and in that year there
were shipped from Michigan not less than three hundred tons of birds.
During the thirty years of their greatest slaughter there must have
been shipped to our great cities 5,700 tons of these birds; allowing
each pigeon to weigh one-half pound would show twenty-three millions
of birds. Think of it! And all these were caught during their brooding
season, which must have decreased their numbers as many more. Nor is
this all. During the same time hunters from all parts of the country
gathered at these brooding places and slaughtered them without mercy.

In the above estimate are not reckoned the thousands of dozens that
were shipped alive to sporting clubs for trap-shooting, as well as
those consumed by the local trade throughout the pigeon districts of
the United States.

These experts finally learned that the birds while nesting were frantic
after salty mud and water, so they frequently made, near the nesting
places, what were known by the craft as mud beds, which were salted,
to which the birds would flock by the million. In April, 1876, I
was invited to see a net over one of these death pits. It was near
Petoskey, Mich. I think I am correct in saying the birds piled one upon
another at least two feet deep when the net was sprung, and it seemed
to me that most of them escaped the trap, but on killing and counting,
there were found to be over one hundred dozen, all nesting birds.

When squabs of a nesting became fit for market, these experts, prepared
with climbers, would get into some convenient place in a tree-top
loaded with nests, and with a long pole punch out the young, which
would fall with a thud like lead on the ground.

In May, 1880, I visited the last known nesting place east of the Great
Lakes. It was on Platt River in Benzie County, Mich. There were on
these grounds many large white birch trees filled with nests. These
trees have manifold bark, which, when old, hangs in shreds like rags or
flowing moss, along their trunks and limbs. This bark will burn like
paper soaked in oil. Here, for the first time, I saw with shame and
pity a new mode for robbing these birds' nests, which I look upon as
being devilish. These outlaws to all moral sense would touch a lighted
match to the bark of the trees at the base, when with a flash--more
like an explosion--the blast would reach every limb of the tree, and
while the affrighted young birds would leap simultaneously to the
ground, the parent birds, with plumage scorched, would rise high in
air amid flame and smoke. I noticed that many of these squabs were so
fat and clumsy they would burst open on striking the ground. Several
thousand were obtained during the day by this cruel process.

That night I stayed with an old man on the highlands just north of the
nesting. In the course of the evening I explained to him the cruelty
that was being shown to the young birds in the nesting. He listened
to me in utter astonishment, and said, "My God, is that possible!"
Remaining silent a few moments with bowed head, he looked up and said,
"See here, old Indian, you go out with me in the morning and I will
show you a way to catch pigeons that will please any red man and the
birds, too."

Early the next morning I followed him a few rods from his hut, where
he showed me an open pole pen, about two feet high, which he called
his bait bed. Into this he scattered a bucket of wheat. We then sat in
ambush, so as to see through between the poles into the pen. Soon they
began to pour into the pen and gorge themselves. While I was watching
and admiring them, all at once to my surprise they began fluttering
and falling on their sides and backs and kicking and quivering like a
lot of cats with paper tied over their feet. He jumped into the pen,
saying, "Come on, you red-skin."

I was right on hand by his side. A few birds flew out of the pen
apparently crippled, but we caught and caged about one hundred fine
birds. After my excitement was over I sat down on one of the cages,
and thought in my heart, "Certainly Pokagon is dreaming, or this
long-haired white man is a witch." I finally said, "Look here, old
fellow, tell me how you did that." He gazed at me, holding his long
white beard in one hand, and said with one eye half shut and a sly
wink with the other, "That wheat was soaked in whisky." His answer
fell like lead upon my heart. We had talked temperance together the
night before, and the old man wept when I told him how my people had
fallen before the intoxicating cup of the white man like leaves before
the blast of autumn. In silence I left the place, saying in my heart,
"Surely the time is now fulfilled, when false prophets shall show signs
and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect."

I have read recently in some of our game-sporting journals, "A warwhoop
has been sounded against some of our western Indians for killing game
in the mountain region." Now, if these red men are guilty of a moral
wrong which subjects them to punishment, I would most prayerfully ask
in the name of Him who suffers not a sparrow to fall unnoticed, what
must be the nature of the crime and degree of punishment awaiting our
white neighbors who have so wantonly butchered and driven from our
forests these wild pigeons, the most beautiful flowers of the animal
creation of North America.

In closing this article I wish to say a few words relative to the
knowledge of things about them that these birds seem to possess.

In the spring of 1866 there were scattered throughout northern Indiana
and southern Michigan vast numbers of these birds. On April 10, in the
morning, they commenced moving in small flocks in diverging lines
toward the northwest part of Van Buren County, Mich. For two days they
continued to pour into that vicinity from all directions, commencing at
once to build their nests. I talked with an old trapper who lived on
the brooding grounds, and he assured me that the first pigeons he had
seen that season were on the day they commenced nesting and that he had
lived there fifteen years and never known them to nest there before.

From the above instance and hundreds of others I might mention, it
is well established in my mind beyond a reasonable doubt, that these
birds, as well as many other animals, have communicated to them by
some means unknown to us, a knowledge of distant places, and of one
another when separated, and that they act on such knowledge with just
as much certainty as if it were conveyed to them by ear or eye. Hence
we conclude it is possible that the Great Spirit in His wisdom has
provided them a means to receive electric communications from distant
places and with one another.




CHAPTER VI

The Passenger Pigeon

From "Life Histories of North American Birds,"[B]

by Charles Bendire

[Footnote B: The first volume of Captain Bendire's monumental work was
published in 1892, by which time the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon
was foretold as a matter of a few more years. His contribution to the
subject therefore deals with a much later period in the history of the
bird and links the studies of Wilson and Audubon with the present day.]


Geographical Range: Deciduous forest regions of eastern North America;
west, casually, to Washington and Nevada; Cuba.

The breeding range of the Passenger Pigeon to-day is to be looked for
principally in the thinly settled and wooded region along our northern
border, from northern Maine westward to northern Minnesota; in the
Dakotas, as well as in similar localities in the eastern and middle
portions of the Dominion of Canada, and north at least to Hudson's
Bay. Isolated and scattering pairs probably still breed in the New
England States, northern New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and a few other localities further south, but the enormous
breeding colonies, or pigeon roosts, as they were formerly called,
frequently covering the forest for miles, and so often mentioned by
naturalists and hunters in former years, are, like the immense herds
of the American bison which roamed over the great plains of the West in
countless thousands but a couple of decades ago, things of the past,
probably never to be seen again.

In fact, the extermination of the Passenger Pigeon has progressed so
rapidly during the past twenty years that it looks now as if their
total extermination might be accomplished within the present century.
The only thing which retards their complete extinction is that it no
longer pays to net these birds, they being too scarce for this now, at
least in the more settled portions of the country, and also, perhaps,
that from constant and unremitting persecution on their breeding
grounds they have changed their habits somewhat, the majority no longer
breeding in colonies, but scattering over the country and breeding in
isolated pairs.

Mr. William Brewster, in his article "On the Present Status of the
Wild Pigeon," etc., writes as follows: "In the spring of 1888 my
friend, Captain Bendire, wrote me that he had received news from a
correspondent in central Michigan to the effect that wild pigeons had
arrived there in great numbers and were preparing to nest. Acting on
this information, I started at once, in company with Mr. Jonathan
Dwight, Jr., to visit the expected 'nesting' and learn as much as
possible about the habits of the breeding birds, as well as to secure
specimens of their skins and eggs.

"On reaching Cadillac, Michigan, May 8, we found that large flocks of
pigeons had passed there late in April, while there were reports of
similar flights from almost every county in the southern part of the
State. Although most of the birds had passed on before our arrival, the
professional pigeon netters, confident that they would finally breed
somewhere in the southern peninsula, were busily engaged getting their
nets and other apparatus in order for an extensive campaign against the
poor birds.

"We were assured that as soon as the breeding colony became established
the fact would be known all over the State, and there would be no
difficulty in ascertaining its precise location. Accordingly, we
waited at Cadillac about two weeks, during which time we were in
correspondence with netters in different parts of the region. No news
came, however, and one by one the netters lost heart, until finally
most of them agreed that the pigeons had gone to the far north, beyond
the reach of mail and telegraphic communication. As a last hope,
we went, on May 15, to Oden, in the northern part of the southern
peninsula, about twenty miles south of the Straits of Mackinac. Here
we found that there had been, as elsewhere in Michigan, a heavy flight
of birds in the latter part of April, but that all had passed on.
Thus our trip proved a failure as far as actually seeing a pigeon
'nesting' was concerned; but partly by observation, partly by talking
with the netters, farmers, sportsmen, and lumbermen, we obtained much
information regarding the flight of 1888, and the larger nestings that
have occurred in Michigan within the past decade, as well as many
interesting details, some of which appear to be new about the habits of
the birds.

"Our principal informant was Mr. S. S. Stevens, of Cadillac, a veteran
pigeon netter of large experience, and, as we were assured by everyone
whom we asked concerning him, a man of high reputation for veracity
and carefulness of statement. His testimony was as follows: 'Pigeons
appeared that year in numbers near Cadillac, about the 20th of April.
He saw fully sixty in one day, scattered about in beech woods near the
head of Clam Lake, and on another occasion about one hundred drinking
at the mouth of the brook, while a flock that covered at least 8
acres was observed by a friend, a perfectly reliable man, flying in a
north-easterly direction. Many other smaller flocks were reported."

"The last nesting of any importance in Michigan was in 1881, a few
miles west of Grand Traverse. It was only of moderate size, perhaps 8
miles long. Subsequently, in 1886, Mr. Stevens found about fifty dozen
pairs nesting in a swamp near Lake City. He does not doubt that similar
small colonies occur every year, besides scattered pairs. In fact, he
sees a few pigeons about Cadillac every summer, and in the early autumn
young birds, barely able to fly, are often met with singly or in small
parties in the woods. Such stragglers attract little attention, and no
one attempts to net them, although many are shot.

"The largest nesting he ever visited was in 1876 or 1877. It began
near Petoskey, and extended northeast past Crooked Lake for 28 miles,
averaging 3 or 4 miles wide. The birds arrived in two separate bodies,
one directly from the south by land, the other following the east coast
of Wisconsin, and crossing at Manitou Island. He saw the latter body
come in from the lake at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It was a
compact mass of pigeons, at least 5 miles long by 1 mile wide. The
birds began building when the snow was 12 inches deep in the woods,
although the fields were bare at the time. So rapidly did the colony
extend its boundaries that it soon passed literally over and around
the place where he was netting, although when he began, this point
was several miles from the nearest nest. Nestings usually start in
deciduous woods, but during their progress the pigeons do not skip
any kind of trees they encounter. The Petoskey nesting extended 8
miles through hardwood timber, then crossed a river bottom wooded with
arborvitæ, and thence stretched through white pine woods about 20
miles. For the entire distance of 28 miles every tree of any size had
more or less nests, and many trees were filled with them. None were
lower than about 15 feet above the ground.

"Pigeons are very noisy when building. They make a sound resembling
the croaking of wood frogs. Their combined clamor can be heard 4 or 5
miles away when the atmospheric conditions are favorable. Two eggs are
usually laid, but many nests contain only one. Both birds incubate, the
females between 2 o'clock P.M. and 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock the next
morning; the males from 9 or 10 o'clock A.M. to 2 o'clock P.M. The
males feed twice each day, namely, from daylight to about 8 o'clock
A.M. and again late in the afternoon. The females feed only during the
forenoon. The change is made with great regularity as to time, all the
males being on the nest by 10 o'clock A.M.

"During the morning and evening no females are ever caught by the
netters; during the forenoon no males. The sitting bird does not leave
the nest until the bill of its incoming mate nearly touches its tail,
the former slipping off as the latter takes it place.

"Thus the eggs are constantly covered, and but few are ever thrown out
despite the fragile character of the nests and the swaying of the trees
in the high winds. The old birds never feed in or near the nesting,
leaving all the beech mast, etc., there for their young. Many of them
go 100 miles each day for food. Mr. Stevens is satisfied that pigeons
continue laying and hatching during the entire summer. They do not,
however, use the same nesting place a second time in one season, the
entire colony always moving from 20 to 100 miles after the appearance
of each brood of young. Mr. Stevens, as well as many of the other
netters with whom we talked, believes that they breed during their
absence in the South in the winter, asserting as proof of this that
young birds in considerable numbers often accompany the earlier spring
flights.

"Five weeks are consumed by a single nesting. Then the young are forced
out of their nests by the old birds. Mr. Stevens has twice seen this
done. One of the pigeons, usually the male, pushes the young off the
nest by force. The latter struggles and squeals precisely like a tame
squab, but is finally crowded out along the branch, and after further
feeble resistance flutters down to the ground. Three or four days
elapse before it is able to fly well. Upon leaving the nest it is often
fatter and heavier than the old birds; but it quickly becomes much
thinner and lighter, despite the enormous quantity of food it consumes.

"On one occasion an immense flock of young birds became bewildered in
a fog while crossing Crooked Lake, and descending struck the water and
perished by thousands. The shore for miles was covered a foot or more
deep with them. The old birds rose above the fog, and none were killed.

"At least five hundred men were engaged in netting pigeons during the
great Petoskey nesting of 1881. Mr. Stevens thought that they may
have captured on the average 20,000 birds apiece during the season.
Sometimes two carloads were shipped south on the railroad each day.
Nevertheless he believed that not one bird in a thousand was taken.
Hawks and owls often abound near the nesting. Owls can be heard hooting
there all night long. The cooper's hawk often catches the stool-pigeon.
During the Petoskey season Mr. Stevens lost twelve stool birds in this
way.

"There has been much dispute among writers and observers, beginning
with Audubon and Wilson, and extending down to the present day, as to
whether the wild pigeon has two eggs or one. I questioned Mr. Stevens
closely on this point. He assured me that he had frequently found two
eggs or two young in the same nest, but that fully half the nests which
he had examined contained only one.

"Our personal experience with the pigeon in Michigan was as follows:

"During our stay at Cadillac we saw them daily, sometimes singly,
usually in pairs, never more than two together. Nearly every large
tract of old growth mixed woods seemed to contain at least one pair.
They appeared to be settled for the season, and we were convinced that
they were preparing to breed. In fact, the oviduct of a female, killed
May 10, contained an egg nearly ready for the shell.

"At Oden we had a similar experience, although there were perhaps fewer
pigeons there than about Cadillac.

"On May 24, Mr. Dwight settled any possible question as to their
breeding in scattered pairs, by finding a nest on which he distinctly
saw a bird sitting. The following day I accompanied him to this nest,
which was at least 50 feet above the ground, on the horizontal branch
of a large hemlock, about 20 feet out from the trunk. As we approached
the spot an adult male pigeon started from a tree near that on which
the nest was placed, and a moment later a young bird, with stub tail
and barely able to fly, fluttered feebly after it. This young pigeon
was probably the bird seen the previous day on the nest, for on
climbing to the latter, Mr. Dwight found it empty, but fouled with
excrement, some of which was perfectly fresh. A thorough investigation
of the surrounding woods, which were a hundred acres or more in extent,
and composed chiefly of beeches, with a mixture of white pines and
hemlocks of the largest size, convinced us that no other pigeons were
nesting in them.

"All the netters with whom we talked believe firmly that there are
just as many pigeons in the West as there ever were. They say the
birds have been driven from Michigan and the adjoining States, partly
by persecution, and partly by the destruction of the forests, and
have retreated to uninhabited regions, perhaps north of the Great
Lakes in British North America. Doubtless there is some truth in this
theory; for, that the pigeon is not, as has been asserted so often
recently, on the verge of extinction, is shown by the flight which
passed through Michigan in the Spring of 1888. This flight, according
to the testimony of many reliable observers, was a large one, and
the birds must have formed a nesting of considerable extent in some
region so remote that no news of its presence reached the ears of the
vigilant netters. Thus it is probable that enough Pigeons are left to
restock the West, provided that laws sufficiently stringent to give
them fair protection be at once enacted. The present laws of Michigan
and Wisconsin are simply worse than useless, for, while they prohibit
disturbing the birds _within_ the nesting, they allow unlimited netting
only a few miles beyond its outskirts _during the entire breeding
season_. The theory is, that they are so infinitely numerous that their
ranks are not seriously thinned by catching a few millions of breeding
birds in a summer, and that the only danger to be guarded against is
that of frightening them away by the use of guns or nets in the woods
where their nests are placed. The absurdity of such reasoning is
self-evident, but, singularly enough, the netters, many of whom struck
me as intelligent and honest men, seem really to believe in it. As
they have more or less local influence, and, in addition, the powerful
backing of the large game dealers in the cities, it is not likely that
any really effectual laws can be passed until the last of our Passenger
Pigeons are preparing to follow the great auk and the American bison."

In order to show a little more clearly the immense destruction of the
Passenger Pigeon _in a single year and at one roost_ only, I quote the
following extract from an interesting article "On the Habits, Methods
of Capture, and Nesting of the Wild Pigeon," with an account of the
Michigan nesting of 1878, by Prof. H. B. Roney, in the Chicago _Field_
(Vol. X, pp. 345-347):

"The nesting area, situated near Petoskey, covered something like
100,000 acres of land, and included not less than 150,000 acres within
its limits, being in length about 40 miles by 3 to 10 in width. The
number of dead birds sent by rail was estimated at 12,500 daily, or
1,500,000 for the summer, besides 80,352 live birds; an equal number
was sent by water. We have," says the writer, "adding the thousands
of dead and wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of squabs left
dead in the nest, at the lowest possible estimate, a grand total of one
billion pigeons sacrificed to Mammon during the nesting of 1878."

The last mentioned figure is undoubtedly far above the actual number
killed during that or any other year, but even granting that but a
million were killed at this roost, the slaughter is enormous enough,
and it is not strange that the number of these pigeons are now few,
compared with former years.

Capt. B. F. Goss, of Peewaukee, Wisconsin, writes me: "Ten years
ago the wild pigeon bred in great roosts in the northern parts of
Wisconsin, and it also bred singly in this vicinity; up to six or eight
years ago they were plenty. The nest was a small, rough platform of
twigs, from 10 to 15 feet from the ground. I have often found two eggs
in a nest, but one is by far the more common. These single nests have
been thought by some accidental, but for years they bred in this manner
all over the county, as plentifully as any of our birds. I also found
them breeding singly in Iowa. These single nests have not attracted
attention like the great roosts, but I think it is a common manner of
building with this species."

Mr. Frank J. Thompson, in charge of the Zoölogical Gardens at
Cincinnati, Ohio, gives the following account of the breeding of the
wild pigeon in confinement: "During the spring of 1877, the society
purchased three pairs of trapped birds, which were placed in one of the
outer aviaries. Early in March, 1878, I noticed that they were mating,
and procuring some twigs, I wove three rough platforms, and fastened
them up in convenient places, at the same time throwing a further
supply of building material on the floor. Within twenty-four hours two
of the platforms were selected; the male carrying the material, whilst
the female busied herself in placing it. A single egg was soon laid
in each nest and incubation commenced. On March 16, there was quite
a heavy fall of snow, and on the next morning I was unable to see
the birds on their nests on account of the accumulation of the snow
piled on the platforms around them. Within a couple of days it had all
disappeared, and for the next four or five nights a self-registering
thermometer, hanging in the aviary, marked from 14° to 10°. In spite
of these drawbacks both of the eggs were hatched and the young ones
reared. They have since continued to breed regularly, and now I have
twenty birds, having lost several eggs from falling through their
illy-contrived nests and one old male."

The Passenger Pigeon has been found nesting in Wisconsin and Iowa
during the first week in April, and as late as June 5 and 12 in
Connecticut and Minnesota. Their food consists of beech nuts, acorns,
wild cherries, and berries of various kinds, as well as different kinds
of grain. They are said to be very fond of, and feed extensively on,
angle worms, vast numbers of which frequently come to the surface after
heavy rains, also on hairless caterpillars.

Their movements, at all seasons, seem to be very irregular, and are
greatly affected by the food supply. They may be exceedingly common
at one point one year, and almost entirely wanting the next. They
generally winter south of latitude 36°.

Their notes during the mating season are said to be a short "coo-coo,"
and the ordinary call note is a "kee-kee-kee," the first syllable being
louder and the last fainter than the middle one.

Opinions differ as to the number of broods in a season; while the
majority of observers assert that but one, a few others say that two,
are usually raised. The eggs vary in number from one to two in a
set, and incubation lasts from eighteen to twenty days, both sexes
assisting. These eggs are pure white in color, slightly glossy, and
usually elliptical oval in shape; some may be called broad elliptical
oval.

The average measurements of twenty specimens in the U. S. National
Museum collection is 37.5 by 26.5 millimetres. The largest egg measures
39.5 by 28.5, the smallest 33.5 by 26 millimetres.




CHAPTER VII

Netting the Pigeons

By William Brewster, from "The Auk," a Quarterly Journal of
Ornithology, October, 1889.


In the spring of 1888 my friend, Captain Bendire, wrote to me that
he had received news from a correspondent in central Michigan to the
effect that wild pigeons had arrived there in large numbers and were
preparing to nest. Acting on this information I started at once, in
company with Mr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., to visit the expected "nesting"
and learn as much as possible about the habits of the breeding birds,
as well as to secure specimens of their skins and eggs.

... Pigeon netting in Michigan is conducted as follows: Each netter
has three beds; at least two, and sometimes as many as ten "strikes"
are made on a single bed in one day, but the bed is often allowed to
"rest" for a day or two. Forty or fifty dozen birds are a good haul for
one "strike." Often only ten or twelve dozen are taken. Mr. Stevens'
highest "catch" is eighty-six dozen, but once he saw one hundred and
six dozen captured at a single "strike." If too large a number are on
the bed, they will sometimes raise the net bodily and escape. Usually
about one-third are too quick for the net and fly out before it falls.
Two kinds of beds are used, the "mud" bed and the "dry" bed. The former
is the most killing in Michigan, but, for unknown reason, it will not
attract birds in Wisconsin.

It is made of mud, kept in a moist condition and saturated with a
mixture of saltpeter and anise seed. Pigeons are very fond of salt
and resort to salt springs wherever they occur. The dry bed is simply
a level space of ground carefully cleared of grass, weeds, etc., and
baited with corn or other grain. Pigeons are peculiar, and their habits
must be studied by the netter if he would be successful. When they are
feeding on beech mast, they often will not touch grain of any kind, and
the mast must be used for bait.

A stool bird is an essential part of the netter's outfit. It is tied
on a box, and by an ingenious arrangement of cords, by which it can be
gently raised or lowered, is made to flap its wings at intervals. This
attracts the attention of passing birds which alight on the nearest
tree, or on a perch which is usually provided for that purpose. After a
portion of the flock has descended to the bed, they are started up by
"raising" the stool bird, and fly back to the perch. When they fly down
a second time all or nearly all the others follow or accompany them and
the net is "struck."

The usual method of killing pigeons is to break their necks with a
small pair of pincers, the ends of which are bent so that they do
not quite meet. Great care must be taken not to shed blood on the
bed, for the pigeons notice this at once and are much alarmed by it.
Young birds can be netted in wheat stubble in the autumn, but this is
seldom attempted. When just able to fly, however, they are caught in
enormous numbers near the "nestings" in pens made of slats. A few dozen
old pigeons are confined in the pens as decoys, and a net is thrown
over the mouth of the pen when a sufficient number of young birds have
entered it.

Mr. Stevens has known over four hundred dozen young pigeons to be
taken at once by this method. The first birds sent to market yield
the netter about one dollar a dozen. At the height of the season the
price sometimes falls as low as twelve cents a dozen. It averages about
twenty-five cents.




CHAPTER VIII

Efforts to Check the Slaughter

By Prof. H. B. Roney, East Saginaw, Mich.

  The following article appeared in "American Field," of Chicago, Jan.
  11, 1879. Parts omitted here referred to an ineffectual attempt on the
  part of the Saginaw and Bay City Game Protection Clubs to put a stop
  to the illegal netting and shooting of pigeons. The Michigan law was
  a bungling piece of business, working rather in the interest of the
  netters than of the birds. Prof. Roney and Mr. McLean accompanied the
  two representatives of the Game Protective Clubs sent North on this
  mission. I make this explanation as certain parts of the article I
  reproduce would otherwise not be as well understood.


For many years Passenger Pigeon nestings have been established in
Michigan, and by a noticeable concurrence, only in even alternate
years, as follows: 1868, 1870, 1872, 1874, 1876, 1878. In 1876 there
were no less than three nestings in the State, one each in Newaygo,
Oceana, and Grand Traverse counties.

Large numbers of professional "pigeoners," as they term themselves,
devote their whole time to the business of following up and netting
wild pigeons for gain and profit. These men carefully study the habits
and direction of flight of the birds, and in the spring of the year can
tell with considerable accuracy in about what locality a nesting is
to form. The indications are soon known throughout the fraternity and
the gathering of the clans commences. The netters follow up the pigeons
in their flight for hundreds of miles. The past year there have been
nestings in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, though in the former two
States they were of short duration, as they soon broke up and the birds
turned their flight to the northwest. The flight of a pigeon is, under
favorable conditions, sixty to ninety miles an hour, and these birds
of passage leaving the Pennsylvania forests at daybreak can reach the
Michigan nesting grounds by sunset.

Many of the little travellers came from the westward, crossing the
stormy waters of the lake with the speed of a dart. From the four
quarters of the globe, seemingly, they gather. Over the mountains,
lakes, rivers, and prairies they speed their aërial flight, through
storm, in sunshine and rain. Actuated as if by a common impulse toward
the same object, their swift wings soon reach the summer nursery,
to which they are drawn from points hundreds of miles distant by an
instinct which surpasses human comprehension.

No less remarkable is the wisdom with which the nesting places are
chosen, they being always in the densest woods, not in large and heavy
timber, but generally in smaller trees with many branches, cedars,
and saplings. The presence of large quantities of mast, which is the
principal food of these birds, especially beech nuts, is a prominent
consideration in the selection of a nesting ground. As the feed in the
vicinity of the nesting becomes exhausted, the birds are compelled to
go daily farther and farther for food, even as high as seventy-five or
one hundred miles, and these trips, which are taken twice a day, are
known as the morning and evening flights.

The apparatus for the capture of wild pigeons consists of a net about
six feet wide and twenty to thirty feet long. The operator first
chooses the location for setting his net, which, it is needless to
add, is in utter disregard of the State law, which prescribes certain
limits within which nets must not be placed. A bed of a creek or low
marshy spot is chosen, if possible at a natural salt lick, or a bed
of muck, upon which the birds feed. The ground is cleared of grass
and weeds, and to allure the birds the bed is "baited" with salt and
sulphur several days before the net is to be placed. A bough house is
made about twenty feet from the end of the bed, and all is ready for
the net and its victims. A bird discovers the tempting spot, and with
the instinct of the honey-bee, returns and brings several others, while
these in turn bring a multitude, and in less than two days the bed is
fairly blue with birds feeding on the seasoned muck.

The net is then set by an adjustment of ropes and a powerful spring
pole, the net being laid along one side of the bed, and the operator
retires to his bough house, through which the ropes run, where he
waits concealed for the flights.

Many trappers use two nets ranged along opposite sides of the bed,
which are thrown toward each other and meet in the center. When enough
birds are gathered upon the beds to make a profitable throw, the
operator gives a quick jerk upon the rope, the net flies over in an
instant, while in its meshes struggle hundreds of unwilling prisoners.

After pinching their necks the trapper removes the dead victims, resets
the trap, and is ready for another haul. To lure down the birds from
their flight overhead, most netters use "fliers" or "stool-pigeons."
The former are birds held captive by a cord, tied to the leg, being
thrown up into the air when a flight is observed approaching, and drawn
fluttering down when the "flier" has reached its limit. The latter is a
live pigeon tied to a small circular framework of wood or wire attached
to the end of a slender and elastic pole, which is raised and lowered
by the trapper from his place of concealment by a stout cord and which
causes constant fluttering. A good stool-pigeon (one which will stay
upon the stool) is rather difficult to obtain, and is worth from $5 to
$25. Many trappers use the same birds for several years in succession.

The number of pigeons caught in a day by an expert trapper will seem
incredible to one who has not witnessed the operation. A fair average
is sixty to ninety dozen birds per day per net and some trappers will
not spring a net upon less than ten dozen birds. Higher figures than
these are often reached, as in the case of one trapper who caught and
delivered 2,000 dozen pigeons in ten days, being 200 dozen, or about
2,500 birds per day. A double net has been known to catch as high as
1,332 birds at a single throw, while at natural salt licks, their
favorite resort, 300 and 400 dozen, or about 5,000 birds have been
caught in a single day by one net.

The prices of dead birds range from thirty-five cents to forty cents
per dozen at the nesting. In Chicago markets fifty to sixty cents.
Squabs twelve cents per dozen in the woods, in metropolitan markets
sixty cents to seventy cents. In fashionable restaurants they are
served as a delicious tid-bit at fancy prices. Live birds are worth
at the trapper's net forty cents to sixty cents per dozen; in cities
$1 to $2. It can thus be easily seen that the business, when at all
successful, is a very profitable one, for from the above quotations a
pencil will quickly figure out an income of $10 to $40 per day for the
"poor and hard-working pigeon trapper." One "pigeoner" at the Petoskey
nesting was reported to be worth $60,000, all made in that business. He
must have slain at least three million pigeons to gain this amount of
money.

For several years violations of the laws protecting pigeons in brooding
time have been notorious in the Michigan nestings. Professional
"pigeoners" did not for an instant pretend to observe the law, and a
lax and indifferent public opinion permitted the illegal slaughter
to go on without let or hindrance, while itinerant pigeon trappers
from all parts of the United States, grew rich at the expense of the
commonwealth, and in intentional violation of its laws. Each succeeding
year the news has been spread far and wide until it became useless
to conceal the fact that pigeon trapping was a profitable business,
the year of 1876 witnessing a magnitude in the traffic which exceeded
anything heretofore known in the country.

In the early part of March last, a pigeon nesting formed just north
of Petoskey, Michigan. Not many days had passed before information
was conveyed to the game protection clubs of East Saginaw and Bay
City, that enormous quantities of pigeons were being killed in open
and defiant violation of the law. On reaching Petoskey we found the
condition of affairs had not been magnified; indeed, it exceeded
our gravest fears. Here, a few miles north, was a pigeon nesting of
irregular dimensions, estimated by those best qualified to judge, to
be forty (40) miles in length, by three to ten in width, probably the
largest nesting that has ever existed in the United States, covering
something like 100,000 acres of land, and including not less than
150,000 acres within its limits.

At the hotel we met one we were glad to see, in the person of "Uncle
Len" Jewell, of Bay City, an old woodsman and "land-looker." Len had
for several weeks been looking land in the upper peninsula, and was
on his return home. At our solicitation he agreed to remain for two
or three days, and co-operate with us. In the village nothing else
seemed to be thought of but pigeons. It was the one absorbing topic
everywhere. The "pigeoners" hurried hither and thither, comparing
market reports, and soliciting the latest quotations on "squabs." A
score of hands in the packing-houses were kept busy from daylight until
dark. Wagon load after wagon load of dead and live birds hauled up to
the station, discharged their freight, and returned to the nesting for
more. The freight house was filled with the paraphernalia of the pigeon
hunter's vocation, while every train brought acquisitions to their
numbers, and scores of nets, stool-pigeons, etc.

The pigeoners were everywhere. They swarmed in the hotels, postoffice,
and about the streets. They were there, as careful inquiry and the
hotel registers showed, from New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Maryland, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Maine,
Minnesota, and Missouri.

Hiring a team, we started on a tour of investigation through the
nesting. Long before reaching it our course was directed by the birds
over our heads, flying back and forth to their feeding grounds. After
riding about fifteen miles, we discovered a wagon-track leading into
the woods, in the direction of the bird sounds which came to our ears.
Three of the party left the wagon and followed it; the twittering
grew louder and louder, the birds more numerous, and in a few minutes
we were in the midst of that marvel of the forest and Nature's
wonderland--the pigeon nesting.

We stood and gazed in bewilderment upon the scene around and above us.
Was it indeed a fairyland we stood upon, or did our eyes deceive us. On
every hand, the eye would meet these graceful creatures of the forest,
which, in their delicate robes of blue, purple and brown, darted hither
and thither with the quickness of thought. Every bough was bending
under their weight, so tame one could almost touch them, while in every
direction, crossing and recrossing, the flying birds drew a network
before the dizzy eyes of the beholder, until he fain would close his
eyes to shut out the bewildering scene.

This portion of the nesting was the first formed, and the young birds
were just ready to leave the nests. Scarcely a tree could be seen but
contained from five to fifty nests, according to its size and branches.
Directed by the noise of chopping and falling trees, we followed on,
and soon came upon the scene of action.

Here was a large force of Indians and boys at work, slashing down the
timber and seizing the young birds as they fluttered from the nest.
As soon as caught, the heads were jerked off from the tender bodies
with the hand, and the dead birds tossed into heaps. Others knocked
the young fledglings out of the nests with long poles, their weak
and untried wings failing to carry them beyond the clutches of the
assistant, who, with hands reeking with blood and feathers, tears the
head off the living bird, and throws its quivering body upon the heap.

Thousands of young birds lay among the ferns and leaves dead, having
been knocked out of the nests by the promiscuous tree-slashing, and
dying for want of nourishment and care, which the parent birds, trapped
off by the netter, could not give. The squab-killers stated that "about
one-half of the young birds in the nests they found dead," owing to the
latter reason. Every available Indian, man and boy, in the neighborhood
was in the employ of buyers and speculators, killing squabs, for which
they received a cent apiece.

Early in the morning, Len, with his land-looker's pack and half-ax, and
the writer, started out to "look land." Taking the course indicated
by the obliging small boy, we soon struck into an old Indian trail
which led us through another portion of the nesting, where the birds
for countless numbers surpassed all calculation. The chirping and
noise of wings were deafening and conversation, to be audible, had
to be carried on at the top of our voices. On the shores of the lake
where the birds go to drink, when flushed by an intruder, the rush
of wings of the gathered millions was like the roar of thunder and
perfectly indescribable. An hour's walk brought us to a ravine which we
cautiously approached.

Directed by the commotion in the air, we soon discovered the bough
house and net of the trapper. Evidence being what we sought, we stood
concealed behind some bushes to await the spring of the trap. The black
muck bed soon became blue and purple with pigeons lured by the salt and
sulphur, when suddenly the net was sprung over with a "whiz," retaining
hundreds of birds beneath it, while those outside its limits flew to
adjacent trees. We now descended from the brink of the hill to the net,
and there beheld a sickening sight not soon forgotten.

On one side of the bed of a little creek was spread the net, a double
one, covering an area when thrown, of about ten by twenty feet. Through
its meshes were stretched the heads of the fluttering captives vainly
struggling to escape. In the midst of them stood a stalwart pigeoner
up to his knees in the mire and bespattered with mud and blood from
head to foot. Passing from bird to bird, with a pair of blacksmith's
pincers, he gave the neck of each a cruel grip with his remorseless
weapon, causing the blood to burst from the eyes and trickle down the
beak of the helpless captive, which slowly fluttered its life away,
its beautiful plumage besmeared with filth and its bed dyed with its
crimson blood. When all were dead, the net was raised, many still
clinging to its meshes with beak and claws in their death grip and were
shaken off. They were then gathered, counted, deposited behind a log
with many others and covered with bushes, and the death trap set for
another harvest.

Scarcely able to conceal our indignation, we sat upon the bank and
questioned this hero, learning that he had pursued the business for
years, and had caught as high as 87 dozen in one day, learning later
that he caught and killed upon that day, 82 dozen, or 984 birds. This
outrage was perpetrated within 100 rods of the nests and in plain
hearing of the nesting sounds, instead of two miles away, as the law
prescribes. After gaining some further information, the old gray-headed
land-looker and his companion withdrew, bidding the pigeon pirate
good-day, and leaving him none the wiser for the visit. Out of sight
we worked our way back to the road, overtook the stage and returned to
Petoskey. The next day the writer swore out a warrant and caused the
arrest of the offender, who could not do otherwise than plead guilty,
and had the satisfaction of seeing him pay over his fine of $50 for his
poor knowledge of distances.

The shooting done at the nesting was in the most flagrant violation of
the protective laws. The five-mile limit was a dead letter. The shotgun
brigade went where they listed, and shot the birds in the nesting as
they sat in rows on the trees or passed in clouds overhead. Before we
arrived, a party of four men shot 826 birds in one day and then only
stopping from sheer fatigue. Other parties continued the fusillade
until the guns became so foul they could not be used, and would return
to the village with a wagon-box full of birds. Scores of dead pigeons
were left on the grounds to decay, and the woods were full of wounded
ones. H. Frayer, a justice of the peace, informed us that a few days
previously he had picked up fifteen maimed birds, his neighbor, a Mr.
Green, twenty, and a Mr. Crossman, thirty-six, all in one day, after a
shooting party had passed through.

The news of the formation of the nesting was not long in reaching the
various Indian settlements near Petoskey, and the aborigines came in
tens and fifties and in hordes. Some were armed with guns, but the
majority were provided with powerful bows, and arrows with round, flat
heads two or three inches in diameter. With these they shot under or
into the nests, knocked out the squabs to the ground, and raked the
old birds which loaded the branches. For miles the roads leading to
the nesting were swarming with Indians, big and little, old and young,
squaws, pappooses, bucks and young braves, on ponies, in carts and on
foot. Each family brought its kit of cooking utensils, axes, a stock of
provisions, tubs, barrels and firkins to pack the birds in, and came
intending to carry on the business until the nesting broke up. In some
sections the woods were literally full of them.

[Illustration: UPPER SPECIMEN, PASSENGER PIGEON (_Ectopistes
Migratoria_)

LOWER SPECIMEN, MOURNING DOVE (_Zenaidura Macroura_)

Frequently mistaken for Passenger Pigeon]

With the aid of Sheriff Ingalls, who spoke their language like a
native, we one day drove over 400 Indians out of the nesting, and
their retreat back to their farms would have rivaled Bull Run. Five
hundred more were met on the road to the nesting and turned back. The
number of pigeons these two hordes would have destroyed would have
been incalculable. Noticing a handsome bow in the hands of a young
Indian, who proved to a son of the old chief, Petoskey, a piece of
silver caused its transfer to us, with the remark, "Keene, kensau, mene
sic" (now you can go and shoot pigeons), which dusky joke seemed to be
appreciated by the rest of the young chief's companions.

There are in the United States about 5,000 men who pursue pigeons
year after year as a business. Pigeon hunters with whom we conversed
incognito stated that of this number there were between 400 and 500
at the Petoskey nesting plying their vocation with as many nests, and
more arriving upon every train from all parts of the United States.
When it is remembered that the village was alive with pigeoners, that
nearly every house in the vast area of territory covered by the nesting
sheltered one to six pigeon men, and that many camped out in the woods,
the figures will not seem improbable. Every homesteader in the country
who owned or could hire an ox team or pair of horses, was engaged in
hauling birds to Petoskey for shipment, for which they received $4 per
wagon load. To "keep peace in the family" and avoid complaint, the
pigeon men fitted up many of the settlers with nets, and instructed
them in the art of trapping.

Added to these were the buyers, shippers, packers, Indians and boys,
making not less than 2,000 persons (some placed it at 2,500) engaged
in the traffic at this one nesting. Fully fifty teams were engaged
in hauling birds to the railroad station. The road was carpeted with
feathers, and the wings and feathers from the packing-houses were used
by the wagon load to fill up the mud holes in the road for miles out of
town. For four men to attempt to effect a work, having for opponents
the entire country, residents and non-residents included, was no slight
task.

The majority of the pigeoners were a reckless, hard set of men, but
their repeated threats that they would "buckshot us" if we interfered
with them in the woods failed to inspire the awe that was intended. It
was four against 2,000. What was accomplished against such fearful odds
may be seen by the following:

The regular shipments by rail before the party commenced operations
were sixty barrels per day. On the 16th of April, just after our
arrival, they fell to thirty-five barrels, and on the 17th down to
twenty barrels per day, while on the 22d the shipments were only eight
barrels of pigeons. On the Sunday previous there were shipped by
steamer to Chicago 128 barrels of dead birds and 108 crates of live
birds. On the next Sabbath following our arrival the shipments were
only forty-three barrels and fifty-two crates. Thus it will be seen
that some little good was accomplished, but that little was included
in a very few days of the season, for the treasury of the home clubs
would not admit of keeping their representatives longer at the nesting,
the State clubs, save one, did not respond to the call for assistance,
and the men were recalled, after which the Indians went back into the
nesting, and the wanton crusade was renewed by pigeoners and all hands
with an energy which indicated a determination to make up for lost time.

The first shipment of birds from Petoskey was upon March 22, and the
last upon August 12, making over twenty weeks, or five months, that the
bird war was carried on. For many weeks the railroad shipments averaged
fifty barrels of dead birds per day--thirty to forty dozen old birds
and about fifty dozen squabs being packed in a barrel. Allowing 500
birds to a barrel, and averaging the entire shipments for the season at
twenty-five barrels per day, we find the rail shipments to have been
12,500 dead birds daily, or 1,500,000 for the summer. Of live birds
there were shipped 1,116 crates, six dozen per crate, or 80,352 birds.

These were the rail shipments only, and not including the cargoes by
steamers from Petoskey, Cheboygan, Cross Village and other lake ports,
which were as many more. Added to this were the daily express shipments
in bags and boxes, the wagon loads hauled away by the shotgun brigade,
the thousands of dead and wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of
squabs dead in the nest by trapping off of the parent birds soon after
hatching (for a young pigeon will surely die if deprived of its parents
during the first week of its life), and we have at the lowest possible
estimate a grand total of 1,000,000,000 pigeons sacrificed to Mammon
during the nesting of 1878.

The task undertaken in behalf of justice and humanity was a Herculean
one, but backed up by such true sportsmen as A. H. Mershon and Wm. J.
Loveland, of East Saginaw, and Judge Holmes, S. A. Van Dusen, D. H.
Fitzhugh, Jr., and others of Bay City, as well as by the sentiment of
every humane citizen of the State, we could not do other than follow
the advice of Davy Crockett, and being sure we were right, we decided
to "go ahead." The question of a wise protection to the game and fish
of our State is one in which the writer holds a deep and fervent
interest, and in serving this cause, he will swerve from no duty, nor
shrink from consequences in the discharge of that duty.

The foregoing article is the result of an honest conviction that the
best interests of the State demanded a full exposure of the methods by
which the pigeon is threatened with extinction.

  AMONG THE PIGEONS.

  A Reply to Professor Roney's Account of
  the Michigan Nestings of 1878.

  --BY--

  E. T. MARTIN,

  In the Chicago Field, Jan. 25, 1879.

  [Illustration]

  E. T. Martin's Headquarters at Boyne Falls, Michigan, during the
  Nesting of 1878.

  [Illustration]

Fac-simile reproduction of circular, issued 1879, showing E. T.
Martin's pigeon headquarters at Boyne Falls, Mich.




CHAPTER IX

The Pigeon Butcher's Defense

By E. T. Martin, from the "American Field," Chicago, January 25, 1879.

  The preceding chapter by Prof. H. B. Roney in _American Field_, was
  answered by E. T. Martin, a game dealer of Chicago, who afterwards
  issued a pamphlet, the first page of which is herewith reproduced, and
  I make quite extensive extracts from the body of the circular, which
  incidentally advertises Martin as "the largest dealer in live pigeons
  for trap shooting in the world, also a dealer in guns, glass balls,
  traps, nets, etc."

  I call the reader's attention to the following:

  In the table given of the shipments from Petoskey and Boyne Falls,
  etc., during 1878, Martin estimates the number shipped alive from
  Cheboygan as 89,730, yet H. T. Phillips of Detroit, shows from his
  records that he alone shipped from that point 175,000 that year. So if
  Martin's estimates are all as far wrong as this one, he should account
  for a total shipment of over 2,000,000 pigeons.

  In Martin's circular, he seems to take offense at some remarks Prof.
  Roney has made in this article that reflect upon the character of
  these netters, for Martin uses in quotation marks the following: "A
  reckless, hard set of men, pirates, etc.," which seems to have some
  foundation in fact, as Martin says: "In proof of the pigeons feeding
  squab indiscriminately, I may mention the fact that one of the men
  in my employ this year, while at the Shelby nesting in 1876 in one
  afternoon shot and killed six hen pigeons that came to feed the one
  squab in the same nest." Further comment is unnecessary.--W. B. M.


A little after the middle of March a body of birds began nesting some
twelve miles north of Petoskey, near Pickerel Lake. About April 8
another and larger body "set in" along Maple and Indian Rivers, and
Burt Lake, and near Cross Village, there being in all some seven or
eight distinct nestings, covering perhaps, of territory actually
occupied by the nesting, a tract some fifteen miles long and three of
average width, or forty-five square miles.

The principal catch was made from the Crooked and Maple rivers
nestings, and when the former "broke," which was about May 25, the
pigeoners pulled up and left, many going home, and others to the Boyne
Falls nesting, some thirty miles south, which "set in" at about the
same time. This gave a duration of two and one-third months to the
Petoskey nesting proper, though it is true that, feed being abundant,
some very few birds remained around, roosting for a little longer.

The Boyne Falls nesting lasted something over a month and broke early
in July; from this the catch was very light. After that, the only catch
was a few young birds taken "on bait."

Besides these nestings, there was one further south on the Manistee
River, some twenty-six miles long by five average width, or 130 square
miles, in which the birds hatched three times, and from which not a
bird was caught, as it was an impenetrable swamp, and the putting of
birds on the market would be attended with such expense as to destroy
the profit. There were also one or two smaller ones, east of this
one. These comprised the Michigan nestings, in addition to which, at
Sheffield, Pa., there was fully as large a body, and fully as large a
catch as at the Crooked and Maple nestings, the birds hatching there,
I think, three times, each hatching taking four weeks, from the
beginning of nest building to the time the old birds leave the young.

It is true, however, that birds were shipped from Petoskey the middle
of August, but they were birds belonging to me that I was holding there
for a market, my Chicago pens being full. Every bird of them had been
in my possession for a month previous, and many for six weeks. So the
actual pigeon business lasted not five months, as Prof. Roney says, but
about three; part of which time the total catch was not fifty dozen per
day.

       *       *       *       *       *

They (Prof. Roney et al.) came to Petoskey with a great flourish of
trumpets, hired expensive livery rigs to ride around the country in,
made one or two arrests, secured one conviction by default, were
defeated in every case that came to trial, had one of the party play
the rôle of "terrible example" in the trout case, and then went home,
and in the face of the fact that they had eaten, or known of having
been eaten, hundreds of pigeons, and of the certainty that the report
was false, had published in the Saginaw paper a report that the pigeons
then being caught in Michigan were feeding on poisoned berries, and
the using them for food had caused much sickness, and in one or two
instances loss of life.

This was not only published in the home papers, but was telegraphed
to New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati, and marked
copies of the notice sent to the press of neighboring cities, the
avowed object being to cause such a decline in price as to force the
netters to quit. It was based on the idea that most of them were men of
small means, and that unless ready market offered for their birds, they
must give out. The effect was to cause a drop in price of fifty cents
a dozen in New York and Boston in a single day, to cause the price in
Chicago to decline to twenty cents per dozen, and to take the last
cent out of the pockets of a hundred netters, leaving many who became
discouraged and had to walk long distances to their homes, dependent on
chance for even a mouthful to eat. Many, though, held out. Telegrams
of denial were sent, and the market in a week or two rallied somewhat,
though it was a month before prices in the East touched the same figure
as when the "poison-berry" telegrams were received. During the week
when prices were lowest I refused to buy many dead birds offered me
at five cents per dozen, preferring to lend the netter money, or to
advance it on his next catch to be saved alive.

And, by the way, let me say that killing the pigeons by pincers is an
instantaneous and painless death, the neck being broken by a single
movement, and the fluttering spoken of being the same seen in any bird
shot through the head, or with the head cut off. But had the market
remained unbroken, had this infamous poisoned berry story never been
started, no such net results in way of profit would have been reached
as Prof. Roney says. Under very favorable circumstances, a good netter
in such a season as we had in 1878, would make from $100 to $200, but
by far the larger portion would not reach $100 over expenses.

At the Crooked and Maple nestings day in and day out the average catch
was about twenty dozen per day to each net and two men. These sold,
except immediately after the "poisoned berry story," at from twenty to
thirty cents per dozen head, at the net, or if the catcher was saving
alive, in which case his catch would be one-third smaller, owing to the
trouble of handling the live birds, he would get from thirty-five to
forty-five cents.

The principal object in saving them alive was that no birds spoiled
from warm weather, and at my pens close by the nesting they would be
received at any hour, while to sell dead birds it was necessary to
depend on some chance buyer or to haul to Petoskey, fourteen miles
distant. At Boyne Falls prices were a little higher, say twenty-five
for dead and fifty cents for live, but the average catch was not five
dozen per day to each net. There were exceptions both ways, which
went of course to make up the average, the most notable being that of
the 2,000 dozen caught by one party, not in ten days, but in twenty,
employing two nets and six men. This I know, for I was at the net and
saw part of the catching, while Prof. Roney never got that far. This
2,000 dozen was shipped East and netted the catchers just fifteen
cents a dozen at the net, or $300 for twenty days' work for six men and
two nets, while on the other hand, during the same time, many better
catchers who had not been lucky in location hadn't made enough to pay
for board. Names, locations, etc., can be furnished if Prof. Roney
desires.

The Professor then goes on to lament his failure before our Emmett
County jury. The reason why is very simple, _he never proved his
case_. This whole pigeon trade was a perfect Godsend to a large
portion of Emmett County. The land outside of Petoskey is taken up
by homesteaders, who, between clearing their land, scanty crops,
poor soil, large families, and small capital, are poorer than Job's
turkey's prodigal son, and in years past have had all they could do
fighting famine and cold, and but a year or so since all Michigan was
sending relief to keep them from starving, thousands of dollars being
contributed, and then most harrowing tales being told of need and
destitution.

The "pirates and bummers" left some $35,000 in good greenbacks right
among the most needy of these people. Many were enabled to buy a team,
others to clear more land, more to increase their crops, and all to lay
in provisions and clothing to meet the bitter winter we are now passing
through, and this money did more to open up Emmett County than years
of ordinary work. It put scores of honest, hard-working homesteaders
on their feet; it increased trade, and, if sent by a special act of
Providence, could not have done more good. Such being the case, can any
blame be given an Emmett County jury if they required evidence direct
and to the point before convicting? And in no case that came to trial
was direct evidence given. So the four true "sportsmen" there in behalf
of justice and humanity, had such a cold reception from all, that they
concluded strategy beat that kind of work all to death, pulled up
stakes and hurried home, and worked up the poisoned berry business.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, about the merciless slaughter. Prof. Roney estimates 1,500,000
dead and 80,000 live birds as the shipments, and then goes on to say
that _one billion_ birds have been destroyed! What logic.

I have official figures before me, and they show that the shipments
from Petoskey and Boyne Falls were:

  Petoskey, dead, by express                  490,000
  Petoskey, alive, by express                  86,400
  Boyne Falls, dead                            47,100
  Boyne Falls, alive                           42,696
  Petoskey, dead, by boat, estimated          110,000
  Petoskey, alive, by boat, estimated          33,640
  Cheboygan, dead, by boat, estimated         108,300
  Cheboygan, alive, by boat, estimated         89,730
  Other points, dead and alive, estimated     100,000
                                            ---------
        Total                               1,107,866

This may be set down as accurate or nearly so, and 1,500,000 will
cover the total destruction of birds by net, gun and Indians. The
total number of nesting squabs taken by the Indians would not reach
100,000 and not over fifty barrels of these ever reached a market,
the Indians smoking the remainder for winter use. No one knows how
many birds 1,500,000 are until they see them, and handle a few. As an
illustration: To buy and sell 125,000 birds in four months, it took
myself, two men and a boy all our time, working from daylight until
after dark every day.

I doubt if there were a billion birds in all the Crooked and Maple
nestings. I am certain that there were not at any one time. I am also
certain that more than double as many young birds left those nestings
than all the birds caught, killed or destroyed. The morning that the
Crooked nesting broke, I was out at daylight, and at the net to see and
help one of my men make a strike; for an hour and a half a continuous
body of birds half a mile wide and very thick was going out; our strike
was twenty-nine dozen, twenty-five dozen young and four dozen old,
about the same proportion as the other catchers. This showed that of
the immense body over five-sixths were young birds, barely old enough
ones remaining to guide the body of young, and this was out of the
nesting from which the bulk of the birds had been caught, where the
destruction had been the greatest. When it is considered that the
Manistee birds hatched three times unmolested, that there was a body
several times larger there, than at the Crooked and Maple, and that
many from each body went further north entirely out of reach and nested
at least once, possibly twice again, some idea may be formed of the
immense addition to the army of pigeons from the Michigan nestings of
1878. Many more young birds left the Crooked River nesting alone, than
all, old or young, destroyed during the entire season's pigeoning.

Prof. Roney's lament about the young dying when deprived of the parent
bird, and his addition to the number "sacrificed to Mammon" from that
source, compares favorably with the poisoned berry story, or the attack
on Turner. Admitting that 1,500,000 birds were caught and killed, not
more than half of these would be old birds, some of which would not be
nesting, and from some of which the young had left the nest. If for
every one of the 750,000 old birds caught and killed, the squab had
died, this would make a total slaughter of 2,250,000, or about one four
hundred and fiftieth of the number he says.

I don't believe Prof. Roney knows what a billion is. However, there
were not 750,000, no, nor 100,000 squabs killed by losing their
parents. It is a well-proved fact that the old bird coming in will stop
and feed any squab heard crying for food, that in this way they look
out for one another's young, and the orphans or half-orphans are cared
for. It is rare, however, for both old birds to be caught or killed,
since the toms and hens when nesting always fly separately, and the
chance of both the parents of the squab falling a "victim to Mammon,"
particularly in a large nesting, is small. As proof of the pigeons
feeding squabs indiscriminately, I may mention that one of the men in
my employ this year, at the Shelby nesting in 1876, in one afternoon
shot and killed six hen pigeons that came to _feed_ the _one squab_ in
the _same nest_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Why, Prof. Roney, the catch went on all the same, your party made no
difference of note, but the weather was rough and somewhat stormy; the
birds didn't "stool" well, and during the days mentioned the catch was
very small, hence the decrease in shipments. Now, regarding the law, it
is well enough as it is; one shotgun near a nesting is more destructive
than a dozen nets; the report of the gun causes the birds to rise in
thousands, and, when repeated, to leave in a body, regardless of nest
or squab, and never to return; as an example, may be mentioned, the
Minnesota nesting of 1877, when the birds were driven entirely away.

The net is silent; its work occasions no alarm; it makes no cripples,
consequently it can be admitted nearer to the nests than its more noisy
partner. Protect the pigeons entirely, and a law forbidding catching
during nesting time is equivalent to entire protection, and you have
northern Michigan overrun with a pest that will destroy the farmer's
seed as fast as sown, and when harvest time approaches, pounce upon a
wheat field ready for the reaper and in an hour not leave even enough
for the gleaner. Their increase would be more rapid, their stay longer,
and in four years not only would the law be repealed, but inducements
to slaughter would be held out to rid the State of the rapidly
increasing and destructive pests.

The pigeon never will be exterminated so long as forests large enough
for their nestings and mast enough for their food remain.

In conclusion, the pigeons are as much an article of commerce as wheat,
corn, hogs, beeves, or sheep. It is no more cruel to kill them for
market by the thousand, than it is to countenance the killing at the
stock yards in this or any other large commercial center. The paper
to-night shows that in six cities over four million hogs have been
killed since Nov. 1, 1878, or two and a half months, a larger slaughter
than, during the same time, of pigeons at the nestings by nearly
threefold. Yet this is not "sacrificing to Mammon." A farmer can market
his poultry dead or alive at any time of the year, and the slaughter,
the country over, is larger than that of pigeons, yet no one in the
interest of "justice and humanity" interferes.

The pigeon is migratory, it can care for itself. It nests in the
impenetrable wilds of Arkansas, the Indian Territory, Canada and
British America, as often as in the land of civilization where it
can be reached for market. It is a source of profit to the poor, or
pleasure to the rich. Its benefits to the Emmett County homesteaders,
as felt through the cold of this winter alone, are enough to compensate
for evils even as black as our Prof. Roney paints, and Emmett County is
but a sample of whatever location the birds may settle in.

Let the law, in regard to distance, stand as it is. Enforce it against
all alike; make no exceptions; let the rule of supply and demand
govern the catchings, and you will have something better than all
the professors in Michigan suggest. Let the supply be so large that
prices are low and wages can't be made, and law or no law, the catching
will stop. But don't make a law that will take bread out of the
homesteader's mouth, and work from hundreds of poor and honest men; no,
not even if the birds should be sacrificed, to a certain extent, for
man is above the beasts, and the "beasts of the field and the birds of
the air" are given unto him for his benefit and his profit.

[Illustration: H. T. PHILLIPS' STORE

A typical game store of the early 70's]




CHAPTER X

Notes of a Vanished Industry

  I have corresponded with many men who were actively interested in
  hunting and observing the Passenger Pigeon when its flocks still
  numbered uncounted millions of birds. Some of the data supplied in
  kind response to my queries is in the form of hastily jotted notes,
  which, when they are brought together, include more or less repetition
  of personal experiences. They have a certain value, however, when
  taken _en masse_, for they are the testimony of eye-witnesses who will
  soon be gone, after which the Passenger Pigeon will become as much a
  matter of written history and tradition as the auk or the buffalo.

  I am under obligation to Mr. Henry T. Phillips, of Detroit, for much
  practical information regarding the capture of pigeons, and the
  business of marketing them as he knew it in those earlier days. There
  follows a portion of a letter written me by Mr. Phillips in October,
  1904.--W. B. M.


I am in receipt of your letter asking for information about the wild
pigeon, but I do not know that I can be of much benefit to you, though
I will give you what information I can.

I began business in Cheboygan, Mich., in May, 1862, as a dealer in
groceries and produce and added the commission business a little
later, as I was fond of shooting, and I began advertising the sale
of game. I have been credited by dealers in New York with being the
largest shipper of venison in the United States. In 1864 (I think it
was) I had a shipment of live wild pigeons which we brought down the
Cheboygan River from Black Lake in crates holding six dozen each. All
of these crates were made by hand by one E. Osborn, who was then one
of the traveling pigeon catchers, the firm being Osborn & Thompson,
well known by all men who traveled then. From that time I have handled
live pigeons in quantities up to 175,000 per year until they left the
country. The last nesting in Michigan was up on Crooked Lake near
Petoskey in 1878, I believe, from which I shipped 150,000.

In 1866, they nested in the town of Vassar, Tiscola County, Mich., and
usually each alternate year, as the mast crop was every second season,
beech nuts being their choice food. The other years they nested in
Wisconsin on acorns, or in Minnesota, feeding on spring wheat. New York
sometimes held them, and Pennsylvania often, for a nesting; but being
a hard place they never caught many there, Michigan being the favorite
trapping ground. 1874 there was a nesting at Shelby, Oceana County,
Mich., on which it was estimated they made the heaviest catches I have
ever known of: 100 barrels daily on an average of thirty days of dead
birds, besides the live ones, of which I shipped 175,000.

There were five nestings that year in the State, three going on at
the same time, but all not heavily worked. That year I shipped by the
steamer _Fountain City_, from Frankfort, 478 coops, six dozen each,
one shipment going to Oswego, N. Y., for the Leather Stocking Club
Tournament.

I bought from Dr. Slyfield 600 dozen at $1 per dozen, agreeing to pay
only in one-hundred-dollar bills. He traveled two days to get twelve
dozen to make up the shortage. The pigeons at that time wintered in
southern Missouri and the Indian Nation, and were shot at night by
natives and marketed in St. Louis. As they fed on pine-oak acorns,
which tainted the meat, the market was poor and prices low. The
traveling netters usually worked at something else while South.

The pigeons started north about the last of March, and usually located
the last of May, according to weather. If food was plentiful they
nested in large bodies; if not, they divided and nested in fewer
numbers. In Wisconsin I have seen a continual nesting for 100 miles,
with from one to possibly fifty nests on every oak scrub.

In Michigan usually the feeding grounds were across the straits, where
blueberries were abundant, until fall, when the birds scattered back in
small bodies, feeding on stubble and elm seed. Frequently they would
go into a roosting place, and make it a home for weeks before leaving
for the South. Traveling north, they usually flew until about ten or
eleven in the morning and again in the evening. I have known of large
quantities being drowned in Lake Huron, crossing from Canada on the way
north, and have had lake captains tell me of passing for three hours
through dead birds, which had been caught in a fog.

In 1874 there were over six hundred professional netters, and when
the pigeons nested north, every man and woman was either a catcher
or a picker. They used to catch them in different ways. What was
known as flight-catching was in the early morning and evening, a spot
being cleared of usually twelve to sixteen feet wide and twenty to
twenty-four feet long, large enough for a net. This was known as the
bed. About fifty feet from the bed a brush house was built and the
net was staked down, two spring poles were set to spring the net out
straight, but loose enough to fall easy and cover the full size of the
bed. The front line of the net was tied to these stakes and they were
sprung or set back as if all of the net was in a roll. A short stake
with a line attached to the outside edge ran to the bough house, a
stick about three feet long was placed under a catch called the hub,
and the other end of this stick was placed against another peg driven
in the ground. When the short stick was pulled from underneath the
crotch, the spring poles forced the net over the bed; the short sticks
raised the net about three feet; and of course it was all done very
quickly.

Another method was employed later in the season; a place was baited
with buckwheat, sometimes with broomcorn seed, or wheat, for a week or
two, and, when a large body of birds was collected, the net was set.
A much larger net is used now. Then is when we got our live birds for
shooting matches. In the spring time is money, and the netters could
save many more dead than alive.

I knew of a man paying $300 for the privilege of netting on one salt
spring near White River. It was a spring dug for oil, boarded up
sixteen feet square. He cut it down a little and built a platform, and
caught once or twice each week. He got 300 dozen at one haul in this
house. He said they were piled there three feet deep.

I once pulled a net on a bait bed and we saved 132 dozen alive, but
many got out from underneath the net, there being too many on the bed.
The net used was 28 × 36 feet. I have lost 3,000 birds in one day
because the railroad did not have a car ready on the date promised. I
threw away what cost me $250 in eight hours, fat birds, because the
weather was too hot. I have bought carloads in Wisconsin at 15 and 25
cents per dozen, but in Michigan we usually paid from 50 cents to $1
a dozen. I have fed thirty bushels of shelled corn daily at $1.20 per
bushel, and paid out from $300 to $600 per day for pigeons.

I never allowed game to be shipped to me out of season; if it came, I
never paid for it.

About two years ago I was told by a man who just got back from the
Northwest, Calgary, that the birds were so thick in the north that
they darkened the sun. They were probably nesting, as he said they
were seen every morning.... Up to ten years ago I was shooting on the
Mississippi bayous for twenty-five years, and used to see and kill some
pigeons nearly every spring, from the middle of March to the middle of
April. We have shot seventy-two pounds of powder in my camp in thirty
days, the party consisting of three men; and two of us have killed
twelve barrels of ducks (Mallards) in four days. On the Detroit River
I have shot, in one week, mostly redheads, the following on different
days: 102, 119, 142, 155....

[I have quoted from the latter part of Mr. Phillips' letter to show how
plentiful other kinds of birds were in the old days.]

Under date of Nov. 1, 1904, Mr. Phillips writes as follows:

"In regard to dates, would say that the last nesting of birds set in
at about 5 P.M., May 5, 1878, on the southeast side of Crooked Lake.
Express charges on barrels to New York from Michigan were $6.50, from
Wisconsin $8; on live birds $3 per cwt."

Mr. Phillips also incloses a letter written to him by Mr. Osborn, of
Alma, Mich., under date of February 23, 1898, which reads:


                                  Alma, Mich., February 23, 1898.

Friend H. T. Phillips:

Yours with the questions to be answered received, and will say:

... There have been several bodies nesting in Michigan at the same
time, and I will give the years and places that I was out. In 1861 a
large body of birds were in Ohio roosting in the Hocking Hills, my
first year out. We were at Circleville, and my company shipped over
225 barrels, mostly to New York and Boston. The birds fed on the corn
fields. In 1862 the birds nested at Monroe, Wis. We commenced in May
and remained until the last of August. The several companies put up
some ten thousand dozen for stall feeding after the freight shipment.
Express charges on each barrel were from $7 to $9. In the fall of 1862
we had fine sport shooting birds in the roost at Johnstown, Ohio (now
Ada), some four weeks. Then the birds moved to Logan County. After two
weeks the birds skipped South, it being December and snow on the ground.

In 1863 the birds nested in Pennsylvania. We had some fine sport at
Smith Port and at Sheffield. We located at Cherry Grove, six miles from
Sheffield. The birds fed on hemlock mast. There were other nestings
in Pennsylvania at the same time. In 1864, at St. Charles, Minn., we
had some fine sport, but our freights were high to New York, so we
came to Leon, Wis. A heavy body was nesting in the Kickapoo woods, and
several companies of hunters located here. In 1865 a heavy nesting was
in Canada, near Georgian Bay. We were at Angus Station on the Northern
Railroad, and the snow was two feet under the nesting. We next went
to Wisconsin, where a heavy snowstorm broke up the roosts. We were at
Afton, Brandon and Appleton. We then went to Rochester, Minn., the end
of the railroad. At that time birds nested in the Chatfield timber. We
then went to Marquette in the Upper Peninsula and camped on Dead River.
A heavy body had got through nesting, but worlds of birds were feeding
on blueberries.

This was the year the _Pewabic_ sunk. Mr. George Snook had 1,400
barrels of trout and whitefish on her. We went up on the _Old Traveler_
and came down on the _Meteor_. In 1866 the birds nested in a heavy body
near Martinsville, Ind. We caught some birds at Cartersburg. After we
closed up in Indiana we went to Pennsylvania. There was a heavy nesting
near Wilcox, at Highlands. In gathering squabs five of us got a barrel
apiece, which netted us $75 to $100 per barrel in New York. They struck
a bare market.

In July we had a big time with young birds at Fort Gratiot, near Port
Huron, from the Forestville nesting. Mr. H. T. Phillips of Detroit was
chief of a party which had fine shooting on a Mr. Palmer's place. In
six days I shipped thirteen barrels to Tremain & Summer, New York, and
received a check for over $400. They returned me about one-half what
they sold for.

In 1867 we were in Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and caught more or
less birds on bait. The birds were broken up by shooting and deep
snow. In 1868 there was a large nesting near Manistee, and we did
some big catching, shipped by steamer to Grand Haven, then via rail.
In April and May was also at Mackinac and North Port and in June did
some catching at Cheboygan, and here I made our crates of split cedar
and floated the birds down the river six miles on two canoes lashed
together, and had to transfer over the dam before reaching the little
steamer to Mackinac, twelve miles, and then transferred to the Detroit
boat. The birds were shipped to H. T. Phillips & Co. At Cheboygan I fed
over one hundred bushels of corn and wheat for bait.

In 1869 the birds were in Canada, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin,
all at the same time, and shooters broke them up. We located a body
at Oakfield, Wis., and had a big catch until the farmers broke them
up. The birds were pulling wheat badly; other feed was gone. The birds
nested in Michigan, up from Mt. Pleasant, but too far inland to get
them out. In 1870 the birds nested near Goderich, Can. Did not do much
there. We then went to Glen Haven and caught some birds. Then we went
to Cheboygan; sent more or less live birds to H. T. Phillips & Co.,
of Detroit. In 1871 we located a large body at Tomah, Wis., and did
some heavy shipping. We used three tiers of ice from a large icehouse,
and the express per barrel was $12 to New York and Boston. We also
shipped from Augusta, Wis., express, $13.50 per barrel. A nesting at
Eau Claire, but we could not get to do much with them there. In 1872 a
large nesting near South Haven, Mich. We located at Bangor and had a
big catch in some big snowstorms. Another body near Clam Lake, end of
railroad. In 1873 we did baiting in Ohio and Wisconsin, but located no
nesting. In 1874 the birds nested at Shelby in two different locations
and another at Stanton, Mich.; small body at Stanton. We did heavy
shipping at Shelby, from one to three cars per day, both alive and
dead. The birds nested this year at Shelby, two places, and at Stanton,
and one at Mill Brook and at Frankfort and at Leeland, and probably at
other points we did not learn of. In 1875 was not out, only baiting
near St. Johns, Mich. In 1876 a heavy nesting at Shelby, Mich., and
at Frankfort. I caught at Shelby and at Glen Haven heavy shipments.
In 1877 was not out, but did some baiting at Eureka. In 1878 a heavy
nesting between Petoskey and Cheboygan. H. T. Phillips located at
Cheboygan. I caught at several points between the two cities.

The above is part of my experience with the birds, since which time
I have kept no record of the movements, but will say that during the
winter season birds have nested in large numbers in the southern
States; in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri. For a great many
years the birds have been moving west. Last winter I was in Southern
California, and a body of pigeons were west of Los Angeles, among the
acorn timber. There are worlds of feed in the foothills, for thousands
of miles, to feed the birds. They are a greedy bird and will eat
everything from a hemlock seed to an acorn. I have known them to nest
on hemlock mast alone in Pennsylvania, and in Michigan on the pine mast
after the beech mast was gone. Most of the nesting in Michigan happens
March to July, and then they skip farther north and return in wheat
seeding.

                                     Alma, Mich., February 24, 1898.

Friend H. T. Phillips:

I will give you a few catches. In 1862, at Monroe, Wis., George Paxon,
of Evans Center, N. Y., and myself made one haul of 250 dozen five
miles south of the city on corn bait in a pen 32 × 64 feet with nets
sprung across the top. We fed at this bed over five hundred bushels
of corn at 25 cents per bushel, and at our other beds nearly as much.
After the flight-birds were over, with a single net sprung on the
ground we have taken 100 dozen at a time.

At Augusta, Wis., in 1871, Charles Curtin, then of Indiana (dead now),
over one hundred dozen; William W. Cone of Masonville, N. Y., Samuel
Schook of Circleville, Ohio, and some other boys, 100 dozen and over.
L. G. Parker of Camden, N. Y., C. S. Martin, the Rocky Mountain hunter
of Wisconsin, E. G. Slayton of Chetek, Wis., are old trappers and could
tell of big catches. In 1868, at Cheboygan, I took over six hundred
fat birds before sunrise. I sold to the United States officers at
Mackinac for trap shooting, also to Island House. In 1861 there were
only a few professionals: Dr. E. Osborn of Saratoga, N. Y; William N.
Cone, Masonville, N. Y; John Ackerman, Columbus, Ohio; L. G. Parke,
Camden, N. J.; James Thompson, Hookset, N. H.; S. K. Jones, Saratoga,
N. Y.; George and Charles Paxon of Evans Center, N. Y., and maybe a few
others. After this time, trappers increased fast. More salt was used in
Michigan for bait than any other State. I paid at Shelby $4 per barrel.
Big bodies of pigeons were drowned off Sleeping Bear Point because of
fog and wind, while trying to cross Lake Michigan. I have seen them.

In the Logan County roost, Ohio, I killed with two barrels, of a
six-bore shoulder gun, 144 birds. The other boys killed nearly as many
with smaller guns; we shot on the roost in the dark. Our plan was to
fire one barrel on the roost and the other as the pigeons flew. The
highest price paid per dozen was in New York City--$3--by Trimm &
Summer from Pennsylvania.

For a good many years the birds were in the eastern States, with heavy
catching in Massachusetts and New York, also Pennsylvania, and the
hunters worked into Canada, then into Ohio, and so on to Michigan and
Indiana, long before they took in Wisconsin and Minnesota, after they
left the eastern country for the west. A big body was at Grand Rapids
in 1858 or 1859, before I joined the band.

The trappers at Grand Rapids were Dr. Osborn, Cone, Ackerman, the
two Paxons, Latimer, and a few others, who did some heavy shipping,
catching the birds on the salt marshes. I have no earlier records for
Michigan.

I kept no record of the amounts shipped from different points. The old
books of the express will show if they have kept them. I wait to see
your report, and remain,

                          Yours truly,

                                                       E. Osborn.


                                Detroit, Mich., November 2, 1904.

W. B. Mershon:

Dear Sir:--Last evening I looked over some old papers and found a
few memoranda that lead to my making some changes in my notes to you
in regard to the date of last nestings in our State. I also find my
later surmise confirmed by a letter from one of the first traveling
pigeon-catchers in the business, Ephraim Osborn, whose uncle, Dr.
Osborn of Saratoga, N. Y., was one of the original catchers. You will
note by Mr. Osborn's letter that he has been a shipper of mine for
a long time. I am well acquainted with him and knew all the men he
mentioned (with many others) at the Shelby nesting. There were nearly
six hundred names in the register book of pigeoners in Wisconsin.
Nearly every one of the farmers, and their wives and daughters, were
pigeon catchers.

In regard to the dates of last nesting: 1878 was the last year that
the catch amounted to enough to keep men in the business. I find I was
at Cheboygan part of the time, and got only a small number of birds in
1880, but some few nested (small body) that year.

                          Yours truly,

                                                    H. T. Phillips.




CHAPTER XI

Recollections of "Old Timers"


Mr. Oscar B. Warren, now of Houghton, Mich., has been interested for
years in collecting data about the Passenger Pigeon, and kindly turned
over to me his entire budget. Among his letters is the following from
Mr. H. T. Blodgett, Superintendent of Public Schools, Ludington, Mich.,
dated November 19, 1904:

... Your pigeon is a stranger to me, or rather has been a stranger for
six or more years. I can distinctly remember clouds of them, darkening
the sky, almost, in Pennsylvania, thirty years ago. Later, in Michigan,
they were abundant, coming to this part of the State as soon as the
snow was gone, picking up the beech nuts and "shack" of the woods.
After a few weeks' flying about and feeding they would disappear;
reappearing again in June, young pigeons, fat, and the choicest eating.
They would stay a few weeks, not more than about three weeks, going
about July 1. During this visit the birds haunted the thick woods, and
would call from the shade of the leaves of beech, maple, and hemlock
trees through the heat of the day, feeding mornings and evenings on
the sprouted beech nuts under the leaves.

There would often be a third appearance in September, when I have seen
buckwheat fields blue with them. Also fall-sowed wheat fields would be
so covered with them that the farmer had to watch his fields to save
the seed he had sowed.

During the spring and also the fall visit, flocks searching for feeding
ground could be called down from flight and induced to light on trees
near where the call was sounded. The call was one in imitation of the
pigeon's own call, given either as a peculiar throat sound (liable to
make the throat sore if too often repeated) or with a silk band between
two blocks of wood, like this

[Illustration: The pigeon call]

held between the lips and teeth and blown like a blade of grass between
the thumbs. By biting or pressing with the teeth at (A) (A) the tension
upon the silk band would be increased, raising the tone of the call or
relaxing for a lower note. Cleverly used, it was very successful in
calling pigeons feeding in small flocks to alight.

Much to my regret I have seen none of the beautiful birds for about
six years. The savage warfare upon them, from nesting place to nesting
place by pot-hunters and villainous fellows who barreled them for
market, with nets and every brutal means for wholesale destruction, has
driven them, I know not whither. If there are considerable flocks of
them anywhere, I should be glad to know it.

I wish I might help you. Such things as are here hastily recalled and
written will not be likely to afford anything of interest, but if there
is any thought or anything in it, it is cheerfully given.

On the great sand bluffs which line our shores in many places, flocks
of pigeons in passing would fly so low that a man with a club could
knock them down. At Lincoln, three miles north of here, nets were put
on the top of the hills, like gill nets, to catch them in their flight.

They were never very successful.

[Illustration: Showing the method of placing pigeon net]

   (_Notes by the Allen Brothers, Joseph and Isaac, of Manchester, Mich.
  A copy of their letter was received through kindness of L. Whitney
  Watkins, of Manchester, Mich._)

We have had about fifty years' experience in the business [pigeon
catching], as we used to help our father as long ago as we can
recollect, he being one of the best pigeoners in his day, working a
great deal at the business in the summer season. Until we were twenty
years old we lived on the shores of Lake Ontario in Wayne County, N. Y.

The pigeons used to have a flying course along the shore of the lake on
their way to the Montezuma marshes after salt. Pigeons are very fond of
salt, or, rather, brine. It seems to be a necessary article for them.
Their course was generally from west to east. They seldom flew west by
the same route. How far they came, we could not tell; perhaps from this
State or perhaps farther west. Sometimes they would go west by the same
route. If so, they were much easier to catch than when going east. When
going east they were looking for salt; when west, for food.

They used to commence to fly about the 1st of April and keep it up
until the middle of June. After that time they would scatter over the
country, and did not fly in large flocks as in the spring.

It would be hard to make any estimate of their numbers that people
would believe at this late day. I was going to say that a thousand
million could have been seen in the air all at once. There would
be days and days when the air was alive with them, hardly a break
occurring in a flock for half a day at a time. Flocks stretched as far
as a person could see, one tier above another. I think it would be safe
to say that millions could have been seen at the same time.

In the year 1854 we moved to Michigan, settling near Adrian, where we
found pigeons quite plentiful. When they were flying here (Adrian) they
seemed to scatter over the State, having no regular course.

The supply of pigeons kept very regular here for about twenty-five or
thirty years. About the time we came west the pigeons became scarce in
New York, and very few have been seen there since. It is five years
(1890) since we have seen or heard of any being seen in this State
(Michigan) or in any other.

Our "pigeoning" was more for sport than profit, and we liked a nice
broiled pigeon for breakfast about as well as anything we could have,
especially when they were worth $6.00 per dozen. If the pigeons had
been sent to the New York market they could have been sold for big
prices, as pigeons sold for larger and better prices than any other
game in that market. Our father did not like the idea of sending
pigeons to New York for a market.

After we came to where we now live (Cambridge), and when I was going
to Adrian, I stopped at father's on my road. He had been out catching
pigeons that morning and had secured 600 by 10 o'clock. He said to me:

"I wish you would take these pigeons to Adrian and sell them if you
can. Take them to the depot and sell them for 10 cents per dozen. If
you cannot sell them, give them to the workingmen in the shops."

I thought 10 cents was pretty cheap, so I went to selling at 20 cents
per dozen. When the men came out of the work-shops I sold them all at
25 cents per dozen. After I left for town, father caught 500 more, and
took them to Adrian the same day and sold them for 10 cents per dozen.
If the same lot of pigeons had been shipped to New York, they would
probably have brought $2 or more per dozen.

About a year from that time we caught 600 in one day, and made up our
minds we would ship them to New York. We took them to Adrian to ship.
When we got to Adrian we saw father, who, after inquiring about our
intentions concerning their shipment, said:

"It is foolish for you to send them, as they will never be heard from."

He advised us to dispose of them for 25 cents per dozen; this was the
highest price pigeons were worth in Adrian. To please him we tried
to sell them for that price, but could not, so, taking them to the
express office, we shipped them. In about four days the returns came,
netting us 70 cents per dozen, about the lowest price we ever got. They
explained that the pigeons had been poorly handled or they would have
brought more. This was thirty-five years ago, _and these were probably
the first pigeons shipped from this State to New York_.

We have shipped thousands since. They would probably average $2 per
dozen. We have sold them as high as $3.75 per dozen and have seen them
quoted as high as $6 per dozen. A pigeoner from Pennsylvania told us
he shipped two barrels at one time and got $5.50 per dozen. We caught
2,400 one week, having them all on hand at one time. We got a market
report from New York where they were quoted at $6.50 per dozen. We
packed and shipped ours as soon as possible. When they reached market
they sold for $1.50 per dozen. The army of pigeoners had struck a big
nesting in the State of Wisconsin the same week we caught ours, and
they shipped them to market by the wholesale. The market dropped from
$6.50 to $1.25 in one week.

The pigeon business was very profitable for men who were used to it,
and there were probably from one to three hundred men in the trade.
When the pigeons changed their location, the pigeoners would follow
them, sometimes going over a thousand miles.

When this army of men had good luck they would ship them by the
hundreds of barrels. Probably as many as five hundred barrels have
been shipped to New York and Boston in one day. Our commission man in
New York wrote us that 100 barrels a day could be sold there without
affecting the market but very little.

I was at a pigeon nesting in the State of Pennsylvania where there were
from three to five hundred men catching pigeons and squabs. It was a
great sight to see the birds going back and forth after food. When
nesting in such large bodies, they leave the food in the near vicinity
for their young. If they can find plenty of food, they nest in large
bodies; if not, they scatter over the country and nest in scattered
colonies.

The nesting I mentioned in Pennsylvania was within one mile of the
cleared lands. We camped within two miles of the nesting. The pigeons
kept up a continual roaring by their combined twittering and cooing, so
that it could be heard for miles away by night as well as day.

Sometimes it is almost impossible to catch the pigeons. At the nesting
mentioned the most experienced hands found it impossible to take large
numbers. The whole crowd of men could not catch more than one man ought
to have caught under the circumstances.

The young pigeons (squabs) were much sought after in New York and
Boston, and if sent in moderate numbers brought big prices, usually
about two dollars per dozen. When the squabs were old enough to
market, the army of pigeoners (estimated to be about five hundred)
commenced taking them. Entering the woods in which the nesting was
located, they cut down the trees right and left, cutting the timber
over thousands of acres. When a tree fell, bringing with it the squabs,
they picked the young birds up, sometimes getting as many as two dozen
from one tree. The large trees, which might have yielded fifty or a
hundred, were left standing. Our company of five took in two days
thirteen barrels of squabs, averaging 400 to the barrel.

There were shipped from two stations on the Erie road in one day 200
barrels of these young pigeons. If they had been old birds, they would
not have broken the market, but this was too many squabs, and the price
dropped 25 to 45 cents per dozen.

Osborn told me that he once caught 3,500 at one catch. It was at a big
nesting in the State of Wisconsin. He had an enormous flock baited.
He said that he put out as high as forty bushels of shelled corn at
one time on the bed where he caught this large number. For a trap, he
had constructed a board pen built up from the ground four or five feet
high. This pen was about one hundred feet long by twenty feet wide. He
took three large-sized nets, and, tying them together, set them on this
pen. He had feeding pens built by the side of the trap-pen, so when
he made a catch he could drive the pigeons into the feeding pens and
fatten them for market, these "stall-fed" birds bringing much higher
prices than poor birds. This large catch filled all his feeding pens.
He said he could have made another catch fully as large as the one just
mentioned, in one-half hour afterward but, having no room, he could not
take care of any more.

This method of catching pigeons was much the best when they were to be
preserved alive. It was rather a late invention in the pigeon-netting
business. We have caught with one net in the same way as many as four
hundred at one time. With a net set on the ground we have taken from
three to five hundred a great many times. In this latter manner, a
brother of mine caught 556 with one net. Without help, in one day I
have caught from thirteen to fourteen hundred out of a flock as they
were flying over.

We have two ways of pigeoning. One is catching out of flocks as they
are flying over; the other is catching baited pigeons. One way of
bringing the flocks out of the air was by using live pigeons kept for
that purpose. These we called "fliers" and "stool-pigeons;" generally
from three to five fliers and two stool-pigeons. For the "fliers" and
"stools" we made what we called "boots" of soft leather. These were
slipped on the leg a little above the foot. To the boots of the fliers
were fastened small stout cords from two to four rods long, on the
other end of which was fastened a small bush. If the birds were flying
high, we used a longer string.

The stool-pigeons were fastened to stools and set on the "bed"; when
the net was sprung the birds were under it. The bed over which the net
was sprung was the same size as the net, or from thirty to forty feet
long by twelve to fifteen feet wide. It was made by clearing the ground
of all rubbish, and making it as clean as a garden. Before the net was
set it covered the bed. We tied a rope to each of the front corners. On
the front side we used two spring stakes fastened in the ground at the
ends of the ropes, which were tied to the stake about five feet from
the ground. At one of the stakes we built a bough house so that the
rope from the net would pass through the house. The back corners were
fastened with small, notched stakes which were driven in the ground so
that the notches faced the bough house. We used what we called "flying
staffs"--small stakes about four feet long and the thickness of a broom
handle, with a notch cut in one end. We also used two more small stakes
to set the flying staffs against, to hold the net when set. It took two
to properly set a net. Each one took a staff, stepped in front, one
at each corner, caught hold of the rope, and crowded the front edge
back of the back edge about six inches. Then the flying staffs were
placed against the small stakes, notch end against the ropes. The net
was now crowded to the ground and the staffs slipped into the notches
of the stakes to hold the net in place. The slack of the net was laid
alongside the rope on the ground. By crowding the net back, it sprung
the stakes over, which sprung the net. The stool-pigeons were made
to hover by pulling a line reaching into the bough house, where the
pigeoner awaited them with his fliers.

When a flock of pigeons came near enough to spy the fliers, the
pigeoner threw the tethered birds into the air. They quickly flew the
length of the line and then hovered near the ground. They had the
appearance of feeding on the bed, which, of course, has been supplied
with food. The wild flock alighted and began feeding. The net rope
passing through the bough house was pulled by the pigeoner, and this
drew the flying staffs from under the hooks, the staffs raised the
front edge of the net up about four feet, and over it went as quick as
a flash, covering or catching perhaps five hundred at once.

[Illustration: BAND-TAILED PIGEON (_Columba fasciata_)

Often mistaken for Passenger Pigeon]


Letter from James B. Purdy, of Plymouth, Mich.:

                                                   November, 1894.

Oscar B. Warren,

    Palmer, Mich.

Dear Sir:--Yours of November 24 received, asking me to send notes
on the Passenger Pigeon. In the beginning I would say that I am now
fifty-one years of age, and I am writing this under the roof of the old
homestead where I was born, hence my memory of the passenger pigeon
for this locality extends back to my early boyhood, when millions of
pigeons visited this locality on their spring and fall migrations, and
during their spring migrations comparatively few halted with us to
feed, but the great majority of them winged their way in a high-flying
flock of unbroken columns, sometimes half a mile in length, to the
north and west, probably to their breeding grounds; but on their
return, from the first to the fifteenth of September, they would swarm
down on our newly sowed wheat fields until acres of ground would be
blue, and when they arose they would darken the air and their wings
would sound like distant thunder. They were not so shy at this time
of the year, as part of them were young birds, which were easily
distinguished from the old ones by their speckled breasts; and I would
here state that, during both spring and fall migrations, their greatest
flight seemed to be from sunrise until about nine or ten o'clock A.M.

My father was an old pigeon catcher, and it was during these fall
migrations that he would go out in the middle of a wheat field, build
his bough house, set his net, and prepare for the finest sport in which
it was ever my good fortune to participate; and many a time have I been
with him when he has caught hundreds of them in a single morning. You
may ask, What did you do with so many pigeons? Well, I will tell you.
We skinned out the breasts, pickled them for two or three days in weak
brine, and then strung them on strings, from one hundred and fifty to
two hundred on a string, and hung them up to dry in the same manner
as dried beef (I mean the breasts). Of course the remainder of the
carcasses we cooked for immediate use, or as much of them as we needed
for the family. Let me tell you that those pigeon breasts were a dainty
morsel, and would last as long as dried beef and was far its superior
in taste.

While rummaging through the attic a few days since, I came across
the old pigeon stool upon which the stool-pigeon was tied, which my
father used so many years ago, and it carried me back to my boyhood and
conveyed to my mind vivid memories of the past.

The pigeons continued to visit us in great abundance for a number of
years, although there would be an occasional season when there would
not be so many. As the years rolled by they became fewer in number
until in the fall of 1876, when I saw my last Passenger Pigeons (a
small flock of ten or fifteen), I tried hard to procure some for my
cabinet, but failed.

One peculiar habit of the Passenger Pigeons was that during their
migrations, should they alight and their crops were filled with
inferior food, they would vomit it up in order to fill themselves with
something better should they find it.

       *       *       *       *       *

F. N. Lawrence stated in _Forest and Stream_ of February 18, 1899,
that when a boy, in the late forties, he spent most of his time on
his grandfather's country seat at Manhattanville, on the North River.
In those years the wild pigeon flew south on both sides of the North
River by the thousands in the fall, and in lesser numbers flew north in
the spring.

He also wrote: "These migrations occurred with the utmost regularity.
The first easterly storm after September 1st, clearing up with a strong
northwest wind, was as surely followed by a flight of wild pigeons as
the sun was to rise. During such storms, I have passed many a sleepless
night watching to catch the first change of wind, and when it veered
northwest, daybreak found me on the river bank watching for the flight
that never failed. Ah! how my heart jumped as flock after flock of wild
pigeons came flying over Fort Washington like small clouds. I have
shot a great many of them, but alas, like the buffalo, they are almost
exterminated."

       *       *       *       *       *

I have run across what was evidently my first diary, dated 1872, when I
was fourteen years old. I make the following extracts from it:

April 6th. "Pigeon flew this morning."

Then on April 8th I mention 9 pigeons shot in the afternoon by my
father, and say "they flew very thick in the morning."

The record, like most boys' diaries, seems to have many skips, for the
next item about pigeons is on the 11th of May, saying that I shot 2
that day and on the 1st of June I mention that I killed 3 pigeons in
the morning, "the most I ever have shot at one time."

My marksmanship seems to have improved after that, for on the 7th
of June I mention shooting 7, and on the 8th 8 (I used to go every
morning), and on the 10th I got 8 again and on the 11th 12, and so on
with varying success. On June 11 I mention that the young ones were
beginning to fly plentifully.

                                                         W. B. M.


Extract from a letter written by the late Alexander McDougall of
Duluth, February 8, 1905:

I have been about Lake Superior since 1863. Have never known any
rookery near the lake or in Lake Superior Basin, although I think they
did breed near Lake Superior, for they were in such great quantities
about the lake during the whole summer. In 1871 when this town (Duluth)
was first building, there were millions of them about here. In the Lake
Superior region there are lots of berries but no beech nuts, except
near Grand Island, 40 miles east of Marquette. It is likely if there
was any roosting on Lake Superior, this would be the most favorable
place.... The pigeon was numerous on Lake Superior in 1872, for I have
recollections of catching some that year while captain of the Steamer
_Japan_. During foggy weather and at night, they would alight on the
boat in great numbers, tired out. On foggy mornings, the blowing of
our whistle would start them up. Often, when they would light on the
eave of our overhanging deck, we could sneak along under the deck and
quickly snatch one. I remember having caught several in that way. As
clearly as I can remember, they left all at once along about 1875.
I have seen a few here along about 1882, and one fall in October, I
think, of 1884, I saw two or three, the last I remember of them.


                                  Kalamazoo, Mich., June 13th, 1905.

Wm. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.:

   *   *   *   *   *

It seems too bad that this noble bird should have been blotted out. The
last flock, a small one, that I ever saw was in 1891. I saw pigeons in
1883, 1885 and 1886.

I have been in their nesting grounds. The males and the females sit on
the nest on alternate days. When their big nesting was near South Haven
in this State, the birds used to fly over this town every day in their
quest for food, some of them going fully seventy-five miles in an air
line from their nesting. One day it would be a continuous stream of
male birds and the next day it would be the females.

How the netters did massacre them and ship them away by thousands and
thousands. Many were kept alive and shipped all over the country for
pigeon shoots. The last wild pigeons ever used for this purpose that
I know of was at John Watson's Grand Grossing, Chicago, Illinois, in
1886. I asked Watson, in February last, where he got those birds, and
he said from Indian Territory, so I think the netters finally cleaned
up what was left of the big flight that perished from the sleet and fog
at their last nesting in Michigan, near Petoskey, in 1881.

Their nests were built and eggs laid in late April. A big wind and
storm of sleet came up just at dusk and the birds left; there was a big
fog on Lake Michigan, and the birds were swallowed up by the storm;
anyhow they disappeared then and there. I have heard tell of the beach
being strewn for miles with dead pigeons, and I heard an old woodsman
tell of the stench arising from dead pigeons in the woods.

It was that storm of ice that surely wiped them out.

I was at Petoskey in 1882, and no pigeons showed up that year.

What a host of memories of boyhood days are recalled, when one thinks
of the wild pigeons. I can see myself a boy again, equipped with a
long, single barrel shot gun, shot pouch and powder flask a-dangling, a
box of G. D. caps in my pocket, and I a-sneakin' and a-sneakin' up for
a shot at an old cock pigeon perched away up on a dead limb at the top
of a tall tree. How handsome is that old cock with neck outstretched
and tail a-streamin', the richness of his coloring, the red of the
breast, the metallic sheen of that outstretched neck is of marvelous
luster as bathed in the glories of the morning sunlight. He turns
his head! He is onto that boy who is sneaking so carefully along the
old rail fence. Carefully the gun is raised and aimed; the trigger
is pressed. "Ker-whang" in a cloud of smoke is the loud report. The
old cock, startled, flies away. "Missed him, by gosh!" is the boy's
lament as he starts to reload, whilst in unison with the rattle of the
grains of powder in the flask, there comes drifting down on the morning
breeze, slowly wafting here and there, a long tail feather from that
noble bird to show that though missed, yet the aim was true.

                          Yours truly,

                                                        Ben O. Bush.


                                   Kalamazoo, Mich., June 17th, 1905.

Dear Mershon:

Do not understand me as to my assertion, that in nesting time the wild
pigeons in feeding, the males always alternate with the females, each
having a day off and a day on throughout the period of incubation and
the rearing of the young. It depended upon the amount of food and the
distance that they had to go to get it, and they changed their habit
according to the conditions. If they had to make a long flight, as was
the case when they passed over here, then they alternated; but I will
agree with you that their habit in nesting time when food was plenty
and not far away, was for the males to sit first in the morning, then
the females, and sometimes the males a second time, all in the same
day. Pigeons require a great deal of water, and sometimes their crops
would show that they had been to water prior to their return flight,
while at other times the food in their crops would be dry.

Some other boys and I had a lot of wild birds that we bought alive
from a netter. We put the birds in the loft of a big barn where there
was a lot of beans that had not been threshed. We would put in a big
trough of water for th

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