Passenger pigeon
The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once probably the most common bird in the world. It is estimated that there were as many as five billion passenger pigeons in the United States. They lived in enormous flocks, the largest a mile wide and 300 miles long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds.
During summer, Passenger Pigeons lived throughout the part of Northern America that is east of the Rocky Mountains. In the winter, they lived in the southern US.
The Passenger Pigeon was a very social bird. It lived in colonies with up to a hundred nests in a single tree, and stretching over hundreds of square miles.
It was hunted for food, and in the mid-1800s it was noticeable that its numbers were dropping. The passenger pigeon only laid one egg at a time, so once numbers started to decline it would have taken time for them to start rising again. Almost all of the remaining quarter million Passenger Pigeons were killed in a single day in 1896 by "sport" hunters, who knew they were shooting the last wild flock.
The last Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.
See also: Extinct birds.
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Referenced By
List of extinct animals (U.S.) | List of extinct animals (USA) | List of extinct animals of the United States | Mustelid | Mustelidae
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