By Keri Murrell
The Passenger Pigeon, once numbering 3–5 billion, was named for its migratory nature. Flocks were vast and noisy, with one in 1833 taking three days to pass overhead. European arrival in the 1500s led to habitat loss and hunting, accelerating their decline. By the 1800s, they were a cheap food source, and railroads and telegraphs enabled mass hunting. In 1878, one of the last major flocks in Michigan held up to 15 million birds, with single shots killing dozens. Hunting contests demanded tens of thousands of pigeons, sealing the species’ fate.
