For the Birds: "Coco," Martha, Chér Ami, GI Joe, Irish Paddy & all the unsung others...

Pigeons Passing By (detail) - Thomas Bennet. A beautiful rendering of passenger pigeons in the wild.

"In 1760 an extraordinary Occurrence happened about the Centre of the Wachovia Tract, on a Creek to this day called the Pidgeon Branch, which has the Appearance of an Improbability, yet actually happened, to the great Amazement of the Beholders, viz. an incredible Number of wild Pidgeons assembled there every Night for a Month together, in a small District, perching manyfold upon one another, so as by their Weight to break down the largest Limbs of Oaks, bending the Tops of others to the Ground … The Noise was so terrible that a Man speaking to his next Neighbor could not be heard without bawling loud, and Waggonloads of Pidgeons killed with Sticks were carried off."

- Both the vintage quote and Bennet's image were found in the essay Pigeons Passing By written by T. Edward Nickens, describing what was purportedly a common occurrence across parts of North America in the 18th and 19th centuries: clouds of nomad passenger pigeons settling upon tree branches which broke beneath the weight of their great numbers. In some respects, it may have been this "plague of locusts"-like behavior which sealed their fate... especially when they sometimes settled on a farmer's crops.

"...And then, within a few decades, it all came crashing down. One of the planet's most successful birds went from billions to one, dwindling down to a final survivor named Martha who lived her entire life in captivity. She was found dead in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo around 1 p.m. on Sept. 1, 1914, completing one of the fastest and most dramatic extinctions ever witnessed by humans.

...People used all kinds of maniacal tactics to kill pigeons, including burning down nest trees, baiting the birds with alcohol-soaked grain, trapping them in huge nets and even luring them with captive pigeons on small perches — the origin of the term "stool pigeon."

'There were 600 to 3,000 professional hunters who did nothing but chase the birds all year long,' Greenberg says. 'The people hunting them knew they were decreasing, but instead of saying 'let's hold off,' they hunted them more intensely. Toward the end, they just started raiding all the nests. They wanted to get every last bird, squeeze every last penny out of them before they were gone.'

For anyone who had seen torrents of passenger pigeons in the 1860s and 1870s, it was hard to believe they were nearly extinct in the 1890s. After the final holdouts in Michigan vanished, many people assumed the birds moved farther west, maybe to Arizona or Puget Sound. Henry Ford even suggested the entire species had made a break for Asia. Eventually, though, denial gave way to grim acceptance. The last-known wild passenger pigeon was shot April 3, 1902, in Laurel, Indiana."

- Quoted text is from the article: 100 Years Later, the Passenger Pigeon Still Haunts Us, recounting the sad tale of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the wild North American bird which, in ways, resembled American wild doves (see painting above) more than the standard pigeon. Inset right is a vintage photograph of a juvenile of the species found here.

Illustration from Emil Schachtzabel’s Pigeon Prachtwerk (1906).

"This year marks the centenary of the death of the last Passenger Pigeon, the most numerous bird ever known, but one that did not survive the colonization of North America. I am willing to mourn that last captive voyager, a miracle of evolution, a postcard for extreme biodiversity, a bird more appreciated now than it ever was in life, except as a meal.

Many people, at least in cities where Rock Pigeons are common, think of them as “flying rats"... Perhaps the critics have forgotten a guy called Charles Darwin, who, despite his social position as a member of the country gentry, was interested enough to attend pigeon shows, buy birds, and bore dinner guests such as Charles Lyell with his obsessive table talk about them."

- Via this marvelous page Unnatural Selection: Emil Schachtzabel’s Pigeon Prachtwerk (1906), which reminds us that it was through Darwin's "obsessive" study of domesticated pigeons that he developed his ideas of "unnatural selection" regarding the evolution of a species. One pigeon fancier who was inspired by Darwin's theories was Emil Schachtzabel, who published Pigeon Prachtwerk in 1906 featuring numerous examples of exotic breeds illustrated by the German artist and critic, Anton Schöner (1866–1930) inset left. Directly above and below are two amazing illustrations from the book; many more can be found in the article.

Another strange breed of pigeons via the Pigeon Prachtwerk collection.

(Continued after the jump)

"Recently, Martha has become the unlikely heroine of a new debate that seems to come out of a science fiction novel. A handful of naturalists and molecular biologists believe that we could one day undo what happened by re-engineering the bird’s genome from preserved specimens and a closely related extant species, the band-tailed pigeon. De-extinction has been proposed as a way of bringing back a number of vanished species, including the woolly mammoth. But it’s the passenger pigeon that is currently getting the most attention.

Some conservationists worry that this approach, ironically enough, could undermine efforts to maintain endangered or threatened species. Where’s the urgency to save a condor if one could simply recreate the species later? Other scientists argue that it will never be possible to restore an extinct species whose habitat has been permanently lost."

- Via the Smithsonian article: 100 Years After Her Death, Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon, Still Resonates.

Apart from the loss of habitat, there is another negative factor effecting this proposed "miracle"... without parents or other knowledgeable members of its species to inform it, how will the hybrid know what creature it is supposed to be? How will it replicate its language? How will it learn its history? How will it perform the number of necessary pigeon tasks required to ensure its own survival? Is all of this information enfolded in a gene?

Incidentally, the band-tailed pigeon scientists plan to use for the de-extinction of the passenger pigeon seems as if it might be in trouble, too. See the 2015 article: Desperately Seeking Band-tailed Pigeons.

***

A Hellenistic terracotta dove (circa 400-300 BC) found on this page.

After "Coco is Dead" - the Language of a Bird, I wanted to write another post regarding doves and pigeons (and animal intelligence in general), but it seemed as if I'd never have enough time. But, as it happened, a supportive friend recently sent me a link regarding Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died in captivity in 1914 (but was eulogized extensively on the internet in 2014, 100 years after her demise)... and, well, a follow-up post - although not the one planned - became a necessity. (Thanks, LC!)

Because, of course, this was information that should've been included in the original Coco story - essentially, it was the bottom line of my entire argument - but, at the time, I was still under the impression was that the abrupt decline of the passenger pigeon was a natural occurrence. This was not so. Their extinction was very much a result of it's barbaric devastation by humans... the bulk of which was most likely "justified" by the tastiness of its flesh.

In reality, domesticated pigeons (and/or doves) have been eaten by humans for thousands of years. The birds were raised in dovecotes or pigeonniers - glorified (& romanticized) chicken coops - which became status symbols for the wealthier households, but also provided real nourishment (eggs and meat) for the householders plus the feathers for pillows and droppings for fertilizing crops. In return, the birds were fed, sheltered and cared for. It was a beneficial arrangement for both man and avian... unlike the carnage incurred when 19th century humans preyed upon the wild North American passenger pigeon until, one day, they simply - and overwhelmingly - disappeared. And, this, after Native Americans had peacefully coexisted with the wild birds for 1500 years.

"There were no laws restricting the number of pigeons killed or the way they were taken. Because the birds were communal in habit, they were easily netted by using baited traps and decoys. The birds were shot at the nesting sites, young squabs were knocked out of nests with long sticks, and pots of burning sulphur were placed under the roosting trees so the fumes would daze the birds and they would fall to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of passenger pigeons were killed for private consumption and for sale on the market, where they often sold for as little as fifty cents a dozen.

One of the last large nestings of passenger pigeons occurred at Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878. Here 50,000 birds per day were killed and this rate continued for nearly five months. When the adult birds that survived this massacre attempted second nestings at new sites, they were soon located by the professional hunters and killed before they had a chance to raise any young." - Via this article.

Inset right above is an ancient Egyptian dovecote found here... and, below, is an ancient Israeli dovecote sourced from this page. Note the unique equilateral triangular shaped-holes in the latter.

In regards to domesticated pigeons and the exotic breeds, it is currently believed that all of them originated from Columba Livia, the common pigeon or rock dove, and while most people tend to view the common pigeon as, well, common and somewhat undesirable, the reality is that this "lowly" breed can boast a list of World War (I and II) heroes in the form of messengers: the carrier pigeon.

"Since at least ancient Egypt, domesticated pigeons have served as a messengers. Their enviable speed and pristine sense of direction made them an important communication strategy well into the 20th century. Even when telegrams and eventually phone lines criss-crossed the continent, pigeons were often more reliable. During World War I, homing pigeons were used to discreetly deliver messages across enemy lines. One bird, Chér Ami, famously delivered a life-saving note to Army headquarters, despite being shot through the breast and blinded on her flight across the battlefield. She was awarded a French military honor, the Croix de Guerre, and her one-legged body (Chér Ami’s right limb was also lost in her fated journey) sits taxiderimed in the Smithsonian Museum of American History."

- Sourced from this page, we are introduced to a true avian heroine, a pigeon who - in spite of a wound to the chest, a loss of an eye and a leg while crossing enemy lines, delivered her message in time to save her human comrades. Incidentally, found in the same article is this:

"And physicist and futurist Nikola Tesla sought solace in his avian neighbors. One night in 1922, his favorite pigeon flew into his window looking distressed and eventually died. He reportedly said, 'I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.'”

!!! Oddly enough - or not so oddly - I can sympathize with Tesla. (For more Tesla tidbits on Trans-D, see here.)

"In the 1st World War a portable pigeon home was created in order to accompany the soldiers to the front. This enabled them to send messages almost instantly. It is known that the French espionage service used carrier pigeons to send messages to and from their agents behind the lines.

One of the most famous carrier pigeons of the 1st World War was “Chér Ami” that saved around 200 American soldiers. Despite injuries inflicted by the German army, this little pigeon managed to get its message to the Allies in time to save the soldiers and the pigeon quickly became a symbol of heroism...

There was also an extensive use of pigeons in World War 2, and decorations for valor were awarded to 32 of them, including two famous pigeons –  GI Joe and the Irish Paddy."

- So, there you have it: more evidence that humans and doves (or pigeons) share a very unusual bond. It seems as if the birds will go to any length to prove their worthiness to humans, up to and including self-sacrifice. 

But, there's more. Believe it or not, pigeons have been trained during the digital age to sort through image data for the detection of breast cancer! From this National Library of Medicine page we have:

"The birds proved to have a remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement; even more importantly, the pigeons were able to generalize what they had learned when confronted with novel image sets. The birds’ histological accuracy, like that of humans, was modestly affected by the presence or absence of color as well as by degrees of image compression, but these impacts could be ameliorated with further training."

Ah well, if it isn't AI taking over human employment it's our avian friends. My guess is that the birds are using a form of pattern recognition - my specialty - but, once again, it all seems rather amazing... and somehow very satisfying to know that science (not to mention the military) has discovered the capabilities of these creatures.... although I intuit that both they and members of their wilder relatives have far more to offer us... certainly more than just a dining experience... and, maybe, even a lesson in humility.

A memorial plaque found here.

"In the beech groves of Umstead, the winter woods seem to be waiting: Soon enough, these trees will nearly quiver with tanagers and warblers and sparrows and thrushes. But the pigeons will never return. Within the lifetime of a single human, the passenger pigeon vanished. Gone are the feathered rivers in the sky, the thunderous roosts with their crackling timber. In their place is a deep-felt void, and a sadness that stalks me on these late-winter hikes. I’ll never see a passenger pigeon. And I hope to never know that day when the world must bid another bird adieu." - T. Edward Nickens.

Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon - a full-color mural in Cincinnati, Ohio, of a painting by John A. Ruthven.