OUTDOOR CORNER: PASSENGER PIGEON: A LESSON IN EXTINCTION

Allow me to paint a picture of the outdoors.

Early morning sunlight dances through the canopy, enticing dew to glisten off of the leaves as you walk through the forest. The stillness is broken with a low rustling noise. If memory serves you, it is the sound of a stiff breeze blowing. That seems a bit odd since you cannot feel any wind.

As your walk continues the sun that was reaching the forest floor is dimmed as if by clouds. The wind noise is louder than before and you begin to worry that a morning storm nay catch you out.

A brisk exit from the forest takes you to your neighbor's hay field. Your hurry ceases immediately when your eyes fix on the moving mass in the sky. These are not clouds. Your mind struggles to make sense of this. The wind you heard without any movement, and the sunlight eclipse without clouds are all a result of this massive flock of birds. The flock is so huge you scarcely believe it.

Each bird is no longer than 12-16 inches in length, yet there are so many that sunlight is blocked out beneath them. The gale noise is a result of the billions of wing beats passing above.

Half an hour later you have not moved and the flock has no end in sight. The column of birds is perhaps half a mile long and the length is so unfathomable there is no way to see the beginning or end. You arrive home and find the flock is passing over your house as well. Noon arrives and the flock shows no sign of thinning out. If anything it has grown larger. The midday sun looks as though it has been eclipsed.

Your neighbor, whose field you stood in earlier, stops by with 28 birds in a sack to show you. His amazement is equal to yours. He claims that he took all 28 birds down with a single rifle shot. As difficult as this is to believe, you look up at the dense flock and realize he is telling the truth.

Upon examination you see the bird is a pigeon. The body is paley colored with a blue head that changes over to a rusty orange nape on the neck and chest. Wings are grey underneath and above with dark spots speckling the outer wing. Tail feathers are long, dark and graceful with tips of white. The bird is definitely not a mourning dove, because this bird is larger, more colorful and mourning doves never have flocks this big.

Evening turns to dusk and the birds begin to roost in the trees surrounding your house. You can think there is no way that many birds will be able to find enough branches to sit upon.

The night time silence is broken by the occasional limb crashing due to the extreme weight of the massive pigeon flock. Morning starts much like yesterday with the sound of a gale and the sun blocked. The empty roosts have a white glaze of dung underneath them. A prolonged stay, you conclude, would have serious impact on the forest of your area.

That afternoon the movement has stopped, the sun strikes the ground once more, and when you hear a breeze you feel it too. A few wandering birds can be found but for the most part the flock seems to have passed. Yet the memory of the flight will last for a lifetime.

The picture painted here has faded. Few people are still alive who can recall such a bird, much less their huge migrations. The reason is that this pigeon, the passenger pigeon, is extinct. It was a bird so numerous it composed about one fourth of the eastern Untied States bird population. Put simply, if you counted every bird for a whole year, one out of four of those birds would be a passenger pigeon. No other bird has a population that even comes close.

This is a boom and bust story. They were discovered by Europeans in the late 1400's and early 1500's. Though abundant they declined during the 1800's and became extinct in the early part of the 1900's.

The last passenger pigeon seen in Missouri was in September of 1902 near New Haven.

The passenger pigeon became extinct due to habitat loss and gross misuse and abuse by people. Their large numbers enticed slaughter for sport and over harvesting. Many of the harvested birds lay in the fields to rot. Passenger pigeons lived an extreme life; a life that was not compatible with what European settlers did with the land. Habitat loss combined with mismanagement spelled the fate of these amazing birds.

Critics ask what use is an endangered species, or why should we be concerned with animals with diminishing numbers?

The picture painted of the passenger pigeon is an experience you will never have. You will not get to see for yourself the massive size of a pigeon flock. The sights, sounds and even smells are lost forever to the residents of our nation. If you think this lost experience has little value, think about the excitement many feel when they see deer, turkey, eagles, or even a bright cardinal. That excitement is universal, and yet we now have one less thing to get excited about.

Missouri has laws governing the harvest of animals to ensure we never lose another animal due to over harvesting and gross misuse. This should be a strong word of caution to those who poach and think their actions will have no affect on the animals they kill; so did those who shot and netted the passenger pigeon.

A.J. Hendershott is an education consultant with the Missouri Department of Conservation.