Rare pair of passenger pigeons arrive at Bruce Museum

9 October 2009
By Anne W. Semmes

There's no more powerful example of how a species can be brought to extinction than that of the once abundant, and exclusively North American, passenger pigeon. It is said that no other bird has ever approached its fantastic numbers. And now they are gone.

However, a rare pair of passenger pigeons, or as Linnaeus would say, Ectopistes migratorius, are on display at the Bruce Museum. The two birds (both male) are mounted in a position similar to that in a painting by John James Audubon, who had an in-depth knowledge of the birds.

In the display, one bird is offering an acorn to the other. Alongside the birds is a fine and newly acquired reproduction print of Audubon's Plate LXII, "Passenger Pigeon, Columba Migratoria," from his double elephant folio edition, "The Birds of America" (London, 1827-1838).

The Bruce acquired the two male passenger pigeons five years ago in a specimen exchange between the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Ornithology and the Bruce's Science Department. This year, the Bruce purchased the companion Audubon print from a set of newly created high-resolution digital images -- full size at 26 by 38 inches -- of the original works of art as scanned by the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library.

As its Latin name denotes, the passenger pigeon was a migratory bird, moving across America in search of food, numbering in the billions and living in large colonies of hundreds of thousands. The birds There's no more powerful example of how a species can be brought to extinction than that of the once abundant, and exclusively North American, passenger pigeon. It is said that no other bird has ever approached its fantastic numbers. And now they are gone.

However, a rare pair of passenger pigeons, or as Linnaeus would say, Ectopistes migratorius, are on display at the Bruce Museum. The two birds (both male) are mounted in a position similar to that in a painting by John James Audubon, who had an in-depth knowledge of the birds.

In the display, one bird is offering an acorn to the other. Alongside the birds is a fine and newly acquired reproduction print of Audubon's Plate LXII, "Passenger Pigeon, Columba Migratoria," from his double elephant folio edition, "The Birds of America" (London, 1827-1838).

The Bruce acquired the two male passenger pigeons five years ago in a specimen exchange between the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Ornithology and the Bruce's Science Department. This year, the Bruce purchased the companion Audubon print from a set of newly created high-resolution digital images -- full size at 26 by 38 inches -- of the original works of art as scanned by the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library.

As its Latin name denotes, the passenger pigeon was a migratory bird, moving across America in search of food, numbering in the billions and living in large colonies of hundreds of thousands. The birds traditionally nested east of the Rockies, northward into the hardwood forests of eastern Canada, with nesting colonies 20-miles across.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, the passenger pigeon, however abundant, was being shot out of the sky, while their forests were falling to the axe.

The last passenger pigeon alive in captivity, named Martha after Martha Washington, died at 29 years old in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden -- in 1914.

http://www.connpost.com/brooks/ci_13520389