Passenger Pigeon
Personal memory by Cate Moses
1914 • Cincinnati, OH, USA
Naturalist John Muir witnessed large-scale hunting of these birds. Tens of thousands of birds were killed in a single hunt. Audubon wrote "The pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps, until each [hunter] had as many as he could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder." With the hunting came the loss of habitat brought on by the Westward expansion of the U.S; a fatal combination for the Passenger Pigeon.
Martha (pictured), the last Passenger Pigeon, died in a zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, at 1:00 p.m. on 1 Sept., 1914.
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