Passenger Birds

When Lief Ericson,  a Norse Explorer from Iceland landed on America in the tenth century he met two stranded sailors in today's Newfoundland and he didn't know that he was one among the first to discover a vast land with an abundance of resources,  a beauty lying in wait to be claimed forcibly by the Europeans from the natives. But as of today it is fair to observe that aren't we all nations, trying our best to find a balance between the prevalent insiders and the living seeking outsiders, hesitantly welcomed under the cloud of necessity and conflict even in our peaceful forward modern world. Since time memorial land has always remain disputed and continue to do so invariably. The real man is yet to evolve.                    

                

One famed Italian sailor Columbus might have succeeded in opening the goodie can for the world in 1492 but all his success were laid down on a bloody stage of transatlantic slave trade and initiation of the decimation of the Hispaniola natives on the shores of Eastern America. Just like the colonial plunder of the exotic fauna of the Australian continent that had cheated extinction for centuries but couldn't cheat the stupidity of self serving man, American native flora and fauna too have been managed to be preyed upon along with the native men until the war of Independence that brought about huge changes and regulations,  albeit too late. 

               

Taking the prize in this extinction saga is the Passenger pigeon.  French Explorer Jacques Cartier first reported about these passenger pigeons in 1534. Native  Americans were fond of their meat and used them as offerings as they were considered to be sacred. But when the New American settlers took lead in the hunt these birds couldn't survive the assault for more than a few centuries after the advent of colonization. Their end, to say the least, came too fast.

               

Ectopistes migratorius -The Passenger Pigeon, named from the French word 'Passager' meaning 'passing by', they inhabited the deciduous forests of North eastern America, breeding in the lands bordering the Great Lakes. They lived and flew together in great flocks of thousands and practiced communal breeding and communal roosting.  This depicts their social tactics employed to prevent attacks from predators and thereby giving a safe haven for their flock. The term communal roosting corresponds to the pattern followed by most birds in coming back home together at twilight after roaming the horizon during the day. But the added quality to these birds was that they did even the wanderings and searchings together. They flocked about in thousands like a cloud sweeping farms off their produce in a jiffy. If this exploitary nature of these birds was the only cause of their conflict with man they would have faced the wrath of the natives long before colonization. But the one dimensional ambitions of most of the colonists and their wars among each other to hoist their respective flags rendered all else trivial and set the pace for this mass extermination.   

                

Dominant in a massive landmass covering today's states of Michigan,  Maine,Minnesota, Newyork, Wisconsin,Pennsylvania, Ohio,Indiana,Illinois, Iowa and eastern Canada these birds bred in colonies and some of the Passenger pigeons took care of the offspring of other passengers. This practice is called Communal breeding.  Writers and Historians who were silent environmentalists too in their time have recorded the sighting of these birds as a massive invasion of the skies something which we see only on the movie screen.They drowned out all noise and blocked away light as they passed through villages and destroying farms in a long magnificent cloud in careless abandon. A sweeping ruthlessness, so like man.                            

Ten-thousands flew together causing them to flow in very close to the ground. The birds flew so close to the land that they were hunted easily by using long sticks and their protective nature of flying together caused them to be hunted down with ease. The strength in numbers became their curse too. Killing the passengers for feasts were done to upheld pride and social superiority too. Medicinal practices suggesting these passenger blood and powdery stomach lining as a cure for eye disorders and dysentery respectively were also prevalent.  Their feathers though short and not so good were used to make beds. The deforestation of the breeding grounds on the east coast contributed to loss of habitat and extinction.  Thus the Passenger pigeon's passage on the train of life came to an abrupt end within a space of four hundred years of colonization on September first 1914, when Martha, the last Passenger at the Cinncanati zoo breathed it's last. 

            

This is an example of Anthropocene extinction or Holocene extinction, meaning it was caused mainly due to human activity. Their habitat covered an area of 2.5 million square miles.  We men rule over an area of 56.84 million square miles. Recklessness and selfishness is not new to man. Will every nation step up to protect our life - giving nature and earth's resources  on a war footage or is it a passage to mass extinction for the human passengers after perpetuating many more Holocene extinctions?