WHO WAS THE PASSENGER PIGEON?
The Passenger Pigeon looked similar to the familiar Mourning Dove, but was about six inches longer, and colored differently. It had a long pointed tail and “brilliant fiery orange” eyes. The Chipper Woods Bird Observatory provides photographs of a stuffed specimen. Multiple paintings of the bird are available on the Passenger Pigeon Society website. One that we found most useful is a 1906 painting by Louis A. Fuertes listed as “Fuertes of the Passenger Pigeon and Dove.” In this painting, the relative size of the Passenger Pigeon compared with the Mourning Dove is obvious. Passenger Pigeons were found in deciduous forests and bred primarily in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The clearing of forests and disturbance of nesting colonies exterminated them first in the East. They probably declined beyond the point of recovery by the late 1880s in the Midwest. Vast Passenger Pigeon nesting colonies were established where significant mast remained from the previous winter. These colonies, cal
