This bird, however, wasn’t killed for food, but for display. It had to have been collected somewhere east of the Rockies-the species didn’t live this far west-probably in the late 1800s. Sadly, we know very little about its particular history. The Burke cares for one of the 1,532 passenger pigeon specimens left on earth in our birds collection.

Martha’s body, encased in a block of ice, was shipped by train to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History where her specimen remains today. George died first, and four years later, on September 1, 1914, Martha died in her cage. The last survivors of the species, George and Martha, named after the father and first lady of our country, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. On March 24, 1900, a boy in Pike County, Ohio shot the last recorded wild passenger pigeon. The end of a speciesīy the end of the 19th century, only a few thousand passenger pigeons remained in the wild, and the last few were kept in zoos and private collections. As the immigrant population spread rapidly across the country, the bird’s habitat, low-lying areas of nut and beech trees, was converted into farmland. In addition to being hunted for food and sport, habitat loss was an important factor in the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Despite efforts by forward-thinking conservationists like Bergh, many protective efforts were overlooked. Not only did Bergh write the first legislation attempt to protect the passenger pigeon, but he also helped invent the clay pigeon, which eventually replaced the living bird as a target. Henry Bergh, the founder of the American Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, waged a campaign against the brutal treatment of the passenger pigeon. In the mid-19th century, tens of millions of birds were shot for sport. “Stool pigeon” later came to mean anyone who betrays another. The rest of the flock, approaching in enormous numbers, was easy to kill. As the bird tried to fly away, its fluttering wings suggested that it had found food. One effective technique for wholesale pigeon hunting was to tie one end of a string to the foot of a captured pigeon and the other to the leg of a stool. With nesting sites that held unimaginable numbers of birds, hunters slaughtered the birds with ease and efficiency. Thousands of men became full-time pigeon hunters. In the 19th Century, as America’s population grew, the demand for food increased and passenger pigeons were an obvious and plentiful source. There are numerous factors that could have contributed to the demise of the passenger pigeon.

Passenger pigeon audubon