Passenger pigeon

What it is

The passenger pigeon was a long-tailed migratory pigeon of eastern North American forests. Flocks were so large that nineteenth-century observers described them darkening the sky for hours. IUCN lists it as Extinct.

Range

Breeding colonies in the deciduous forests of the eastern and central United States and southern Canada; wintering farther south in the same region.

What happened

Order-of-magnitude estimates put the pre-collapse population in the billions (often cited as 3–5 billion; the true figure is unknown). Market hunting and the destruction of nesting colonies in the late 1800s broke a species that apparently needed huge colonies to breed. The last wild birds were gone around 1900. Martha, the last captive, died on 1 September 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.

When / status

Extinct. Last captive death dated to the day: 1 September 1914.

Human role

Industrial hunting and forest clearance — a human-caused extinction with an unusually precise end date.

Sources

IUCN Red List (Ectopistes migratorius, EX); Cincinnati Zoo record for Martha; Schorger and later historical estimates.