![]() Population numbers really are incredulous but they come from such revered sources that they are also totally believable. At the time that the Europeans set foot on American soil, there were between 3 billion and 5 billion passenger pigeons in the country. The passenger pigeon was native to the North American continent.įor a long time, science believed the passenger pigeon to have descended from pigeons and doves in the Zenaida genus that had colonized the great plains but later studies of its taxonomy and ecology suggest it is more closely linked to migratory Columbidae crossing the Pacific from South East Asia or from Beringia (an area that now corresponds to an area spanning Alaska and parts of Russia and Canada).Įarly explorers and settlers very frequently mentioned the species in their writings, with Samuel de Champlain reporting ‘countless numbers’ of them in 1605.Īt the healthiest stage of their existence, it is estimated the passenger pigeon represented between 25 and 40 percent of the total bird population across the United States. At one time there was a huge population but they became extinct in the early twentieth century. The passenger pigeon was endemic to North America. There are certain extinct animals that never seem to die in the minds of the public – the woolly mammoth and the dodo are two prime examples.Īnother is the passenger pigeon – interestingly a cousin of the dodo, both being members of the Columbidae family.
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