32. Eaton 386; Atkinson 8.
33. Butler (1899) 150 and (1902) 98–99.
34. Dr. McGrannon in Todd 271; Little Rock in Litzke 24; Babcock in Hough (1910).
35. Schorger (1955) 286.
36. Henninger 82; Geoffrey Sea, personal communication.
37. Offered to donate in Cokinos 232; Ohio Conservation Bulletin 17.
38. Cokinos 244.
39. Forbush (1927) 77; Townsend 379–80. Schorger rejected six post-1900 specimen-based reports that may well have been identified correctly, even if some of them are lacking important details. This judgment is based not only on the people who claimed to have seen the specimens but the stature and reliability of their contemporaries who assessed and accepted those claims. The first two of these involve a St. Louis game dealer who told Otto Widmann, Missouri’s leading ornithologist at the time, that he received twelve dozen birds from Arkansas in 1902 and another in a shipment of ducks from Black River, Missouri, in 1906. Widmann thought it unlikely that the dealer would have erred in his identification. Pennsylvania state ornithologist Harvey Surface told the legislature in 1904 that he received a bird the previous year that had been shot out of a flock of seventy-five or eighty. Maine is home for a 1904 record that is based on the observation of a newly killed bird in a taxidermy shop. Forbush and Ora Knight (Maine’s leading ornithologist of his day) found the record credible, as have Ralph Palmer and Peter Vickery. “A Swede” reportedly shot a passenger pigeon at North Bridgeport, Fairfield County, Connecticut, in August 1906. It wound up in the collection of George Hamlin, which is now housed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Fleming sank the record by pointing out that Hamlin never mentioned the bird when he contributed to a 1913 book on Connecticut birds, an assertion that dismisses the possibility that Hamlin acquired it later. And finally, in 1915, octogenarian J. L. Howard sent a bird to Cornell University along with a letter providing a detailed account of his having shot it in 1909. The mount bore a date of 1898, which could have referred to a previous tenant, but Fleming argued Howard was too old to remember whether an incident occurred six years ago or seventeen. In addition to these birds, there is a specimen in the Yale University collection from Bay City, Michigan, that is dated January 24, 1906. But after an examination of the evidence, Kristof Zyskowski (Yale’s bird collection manager), Jon Wuepper (editor of Michigan Birds and Natural History), and I all agree that the 1906 date clearly refers to when the donor received the bird and not when it was killed. And last, a bird supposedly shot in Chicago in 1901 could just as easily have been killed in 1891 (Greenberg (2002) 507).
40. Menard County Illinois History.
41. Purdue 51.
42. Butler (1902) 98–99.
43. Butler (1912) 64. I thank Dr. Stan Hedeen for alerting me to the 1912 paper and Bill Whan for the 1902 paper.
44. Schorger (1955) 223.
45. Merriam in Cutright 152–53; Burroughs in Brinkley 686.
46. Mershon 185, 179.
47. French 172.
48. Hodge (1911) 49–50.
49. American Field (1910) 124–25.
50. Ibid., 125.
51. Ibid.
52. Nests also found in Hodge (1911) 51; Harrington in Anonymous.
53. Hodge (1912) 169–74.
54. Ibid., 174.
55. Ibid., 175.
CHAPTER 9: MARTHA AND HER KIN: THE CAPTIVE FLOCKS
1. French 180.
2. Milwaukee Journal (September 18, 1935), Milwaukee Journal (June 14, 1898).
3. HM. 539.
4. Deane (1896) 235–37.
5. Ibid., 236.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 237.
8. Morse 271.
9. Pauly 145–46.
10. Ibid., 162.
11. Deane (1908) 181–83; “my special pets” in Ames 464.
12. Whitman (1899) 334.
13. “passenger pigeon’s instinct”: ibid. The two relevant facts were brought to my attention by David Blockstein.
14. Craig (1913) 95.
15. Pauly 162.
16. Deane (1908) 182.
17. Pauly 161.
18. Schorger (1955) 28; Pauly 162–64.
19. Ehrlinger 5; Cokinos 258.
20. Ehrlinger 5.
21. Ibid., 15; Cincinnati Zoo web page; Cokinos 256–59.
22. Schorger (1955) 29.
23. F. Thompson (1879) 265; Thompson (1881) 122.
24. Herman 78.
25. Ibid., 79.
26. Cokinos 259.
27. Deane (1909) 429.
28. Ibid.; Herman 79–80.
29. Cokinos 264.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 266.
32. Ibid., 276–79.
33. Shufeldt 30.
34. Ibid., 31.
35. Ibid., 38.
CHAPTER 10: EXTINCTION AND BEYOND
1. Swarth 79; Rhoads 311.
2. French 33, 83.
3. Mershon Papers at Hoyt Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
4. Jason Weckstein, of the Field Museum and an expert on bird parasites, tells me that the possibility exists that some unknown disease may have affected the birds in ways that diminished their capacity to feed, breed, or conduct other vital funcitons without actually leaving telltale piles of corpses. At least one major study focusing on passenger pigeon DNA will be looking for diseases as well.
5. Bucher 7–9, 24, 19–20.
6. Josselyn in Wright (1910) 431; Kalm 58; Smith in Wright (1911) 428.
7. Buttons in Blockstein (2002) “Conservation and Management”5. S. V. Wharram (68) tells of watching a small nesting colony in 1877 in Ohio, which he observed at leisure and where there is no mention of the birds’ being disturbed (it seems to have been on his family’s property). But apart from recalling only one egg per nest, he does not add much to the pool of facts, especially as to the success of the nesting effort. These smaller concentrations may have represented sink populations, birds drawn to an area seemingly suitable in habitat but possessing or missing some attribute that makes it difficult or impossible to reproduce. The most famous North American examples are neotropical migrants such as ovenbirds and wood thrushes that set up territories in Midwestern woodlands, but produce few if any offspring due to parasitism by brown-headed cowbirds.
8. Moose Factory in Mitchell 22; Schorger (1955) 36–43.
9. Schorger (1955) 212; Mitchell 139–40; Todd 270; Jackson and Jackson 769.
10. Mrazek, documentary treatment,
http://e-int.com/messagefrommartha/.
11. Bucher 23; Blockstein (2002) “Conservation and Management”4.
12. Halliday 159. That decline itself fostered increased mortality is related to the Allee effect, named for biologist Warder Clyde Allee. They relate to the “decline in individual fitness as low population size or density, that can result in critical population thresholds below which populations crash to extinction” (Courchamp et al., 2008 Oxford Scholarship Online). See also Reed 232–41.
13. Goodwin 176–78.
14. Cart 7–12. For a 1922 child’s statement on bird conservation, see Greenberg (2008) 384.
15. Ibid., 66.
16. Blumm and Ritchie 126–27.
17. Hornaday 305–08.
18. Tober 159–62; Missouri v. Holland.
19. United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
20. Sixth mass extinction in Estes 301.
21. Blockstein (1989) 63–67; Myers 14–21.
22. Klehm 80–90; Lebbin et al. 318.
23. Lebbin et al. 328.
24. Phys.Org.
25. Lebbin 311; Loomis.
26. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
27. Greenberg (2002) 155–61, 174–76.
28. Lebbin et al. 307–9.
29. Ibid., 309–10.
30. Bat Conservation International; B. Miller A2.
31. United States Geological Survey.
32. Ibid., 296–98.
33. Many books, w
ebsites, and documentaries have been produced on what can be done to slow or reverse the negative impacts humans have on biodiversity. In addition, numerous private and public organizations actively address these and other environmental issues through research (both by professional and citizen scientists), education of adults and children, involvement in politics, and a broad array of outreach activities to engage as many people as possible. There is a role for everyone in this vital effort.
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