Life
There Were 5 Billion. Then There Was One.
The passenger pigeon was once North America's most abundant bird, yet it went extinct within living memory of its peak. Railroads let hunters ship meat far and fast, but the Short argues the deeper problem was that the birds only bred in huge colonies, so once flocks thinned they stopped reproducing. It ends with Martha, the last of her kind.
The numbers
- There were once about 5 billion passenger pigeons.
- Flocks could darken the sky for three days at a time.
- About fifty thousand birds a day were taken straight from their nests.
- The Cincinnati Zoo offered $1,000 for a mate for Martha; none was found.
- Martha died on 1 September 1914, aged 29.
Sources cited in the video: US Fish & Wildlife Service · National Audubon Society
