As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Extinction is a thing which can not be undone. The 21st century is seeing a wiping out of the American song bird and almost all migratory birds, not from hunting, but from hands unseen.
Most have heard of the Passenger Pigeon, but I doubt if any have ever read what kind of birds they were, as the destruction of them was complete before the great sports writers could record their tales.
I have here a few quotes which are of interest in detailing this now unknown wild American Pigeon. Read all of the quotes through, so you are no longer ignorant of this wonderful bird and how it really met it's end.
"The flocks were simply immense, and it was impossible, when many fired into the same flock, to tell who brought down the birds;while the air above and around me was one fluttering mass of blue and red, and the spiked tails of the birds flitted just out of my reach."
"In going to their roosting-places, they annually flew up the Valley of the Mississippi, following the river in its windings. In this vicinity, they flew about a mile west of the city, sweeping up and down over the hills and valleys, resembling the long tail of a kite, that would be changed into serpentine form by the fitful wind. East of us, drifting rapidly and gracefully over the tops of the willows, oaks, and elms in the bottom-land, they darkened the shores of the western boundary of the State of Illinois."
"At first, they flew in flocks of from 300 to 500. Many of the flocks consisted entirely of males, then others of females."
"The main body first appeared at 4 o'clock; the flock was fully 100 yards wide, and densely massed together. Shot after shot was fired into them, the only effect being a momentary opening;
Five o'clock and then six passed by, and still no end in sight."
"The flight of the pigeons, when flying singly or traveling, is very rapid, its speed being estimated at 100 miles an hour; this speed is attained when darting through the woods or when in high flight. When going to and returning from their feeding-grounds, they follow the hills and ravines, searching for food, and do not fly at such great speed. Their food consists of corn, oats, wheat, berries, and rice, but more especially the acorns and beech-nuts—indeed, nuts of all kinds that they can swallow. These nuts are sought for on the ground, and are called under the general head of mast. Where mast can be found, there the birds congregate in immense flocks,"
"The blue wild pigeons seek the deepest woods, The loveliest forests of far Michigan, Of the Minnesota and Kentucky realms, Indiana woodlands and Ohio wastes; And farther south, in Mississippi groves, They swarming congregate in early spring, And late in year their roosting-places seek "
"A ten-gauge gun was usually used, loaded with an ounce and three-quarters of shot. As many as three dozen birds were killed, at times, at a single discharge of one barrel, one party telling me that he once killed seventy-one birds in two shots. After the place had been selected for a stand, around this spot grain was scattered to entice the birds; but the most effective way was to coax them down with stool-pigeons. These stool-pigeons were known as flyers or hoverers. When a flock was sighted coming toward the stand, the shooter selected one of the flyers, and tossed him into the air, his feet tied to a long string; the bird flew until the end of the string was reached, then, feeling it could go no farther, gradually lowered, settling softly"
"At this time, from the bough house, there was called, rapidly, "keek," "keek," u keek," this cry being the kind the bird made when feeding or closely searching for food;"
"In the Eastern States, the birds were fond of alighting in the salt licks or beds, and all along their line of flight these stands were built, remaining year after year; no one thought of molesting them, and a hunter always held sacred the stand of another, and would never use one without the consent of the owner. Many of these stands were of local reputation, and had descended from sire to son, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. It is a grand sight to see a flock of several thousand swoop down, decoyed into the fowler's stand. They will come along, sweeping and trailing over the hills and down the valleys, or in straight and steady flight high in air."
"Professor Honey: " On reaching Petoskey, Michigan, we found the condition of affairs had not been magnified; indeed, it exceeded our gravest fears. Here, a few miles north, was a pigeon-nesting of irregular dimensions, estimated, by those best qualified to judge, to be forty miles in length by three to ten miles in width, probably the largest nesting that has ever existed in the United States, covering something like 100,000 acres of land, and including not less than 150,000 acres within its limits."
"but each bird tries to follow the path of its predecessor, and the long trail of purple, blue, and white descends like an avalanche, in appearance a huge inverted cone or spiral stream of life. As they wind around in a circle before alighting, and then cover the ground in a fluttering mass, they hover and flit over the earth, covering it at times to the depth of sev- eral feet with their struggling bodies."
"The twittering grew louder, On every hand the eye would meet these graceful creatures of the forest, which, in their delicate robes of blue, purple, and brown, darted hither and thither with the quickness of thought. Every bough was bending under their weight, so tame one could almost touch them, while in every direction, crossing and recrossing, the flying birds drew a net-work before the dizzy eyes of the beholder, until he fain would close his eyes to shut out the bewildering scene."
"As soon as caught, the heads were jerked off from the tender bodies with the hand, and the dead birds tossed into heaps. Others knocked the young fledgelings out of the nests with long poles, their weak and untried wings failing to carry them beyond the clutches of the assistant, who, with hands reeking with blood and feathers, tears the head off the living bird, and throws its quivering body upon the heap. Thousands of young birds lay among the ferns and leaves, dead, having been knocked out of the nests by the promiscuous tree-slashing, and dying for want of nourishment and care, which the parent birds, trapped off by the netter, could not give. The squab-killers stated that 'about one-half of the young birds in the nests they found dead,' owing to the latter reason. Every available Indian, man, and boy in the neighborhood was in the employ of buyers and speculators killing squabs, for which they received a cent a piece."
"Each family brought its kit of cooking-utensils, axes, a stock of provisions, tubs, barrels, and firkins to pack the birds in, and came intending to carry on the business until the nesting broke up.
we one day drove over 400 Indians out of the nesting, and their retreat back to their farms would have rivaled Bull Run. Five hundred more were met on the road to the nesting, and turned back. The number of pigeons these two hordes would have destroyed would have been incalculable."
"Every homesteader in the country, who owned or could hire an ox-team or pair of horses, was engaged in hauling birds to Petoskey for shipment, for which they received $4 per wagon-load. To keep peace in the family,' and avoid complaint, the pigeon-men fitted up many of the settlers with nets, and instructed them in the art of trapping. Added to these were the buyers, shippers, packers, Indians, and boys, making not less than 2,000 persons (some placed it at 2,500) engaged in the traffic at this one nesting. Fully fifty teams were engaged in hauling birds to the railroad station. The road was carpeted with feathers, and the wings and feath- ers from the packing-houses were used by the wagon load to fill up the holes in the road."
"The first shipment of birds from Petoskey was upon March 22d, and the last upon August 12th, making over twenty weeks, or five months, that the bird war was carried on. For many weeks the railroad shipments averaged fifty barrels of dead birds per day—thirty to forty dozen old birds and about fifty dozen squabs being packed in a barrel. Allowing 500 birds to a barrel, and averaging the entire shipments for the season at twenty-five barrels per day, we find the rail shipments to have been 12,500 dead birds daily,or 1,500,000 for the summer. Of live birds, there were shipped 1,116 crates, six dozen per crate, or 80,352 birds. These were the rail shipments only, and not including the cargoes by steamers from Petoskey, Cheboygan, Cross Village, and other lake ports, which were as many more. Added to this were the daily express shipments in bags and boxes, the wagon-loads hauled away by the shot-gun brigade, the thousands of dead and wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of squabs dead in the nest by the trapping off of the parent birds soon after hatching (for a young pigeon will surely die if deprived of its parents during the first week of its life), and we have, at the lowest possible estimate, a grand total of 1,000,000,000 pigeons sacrificed to Mammon during the nesting of 1878."
" In soft spring-time they seek some lone retreat, Where endless forests stretch their bowery realm, And here they build their nests and rear their brood; Here tender grass and underwood die out, And earth is strewn with wither'd branch of trees, Broken by weight of birds that roost above."
-William Bruce Leffingwell
American Hunter
The above is the reality, in how again you have been lied to, in "hunting" destroyed the Passenger Pigeon. It was the literal destruction of Indians and poor whites in selling to the metropolitan markets in murdering birds in their nesting areas, which brought about the extinction of this remarkable bird.
I will add to this the modern genocide of the American Grackel or blackbird, which was sprayed with poisons in Louisiana, because it was shitting on rich people's cars. Those sky darkening flocks are now gone too forever, and replaced by all the damned insects ruining human food supply, these birds were eating in feeding their young.
I am so greatful to Mr. Leffingwell in his memoirs as a hunter in recording the reality of the Passenger Pigeon, from it's sounds, flight, flocking, eating, colors and how it's immense numbers darkened the sky, and how it was all gone before the year 1900 arrived.
These things are important as the propaganda is there that hunting destroyed the flocks, and that was not the case in the least. Hunting did not destroy the buffalo, but market hunting by money men is what what brought their near extinction, as did most wildlife, as there was money to be made in plundering the wilds.
That is the reality and once again I humbly post the reality, so the ignorant will not prevail in bringing more destruction to people and animals.
agtG
