A haunting, beautifully illustrated memorial to this iconic extinct
bird
At the start of the nineteenth century, Passenger Pigeons were perhaps
the most abundant birds on the planet, numbering literally in the
billions. The flocks were so large and so dense that they blackened the
skies, even blotting out the sun for days at a stretch. Yet by the end
of the century, the most common bird in North America had vanished from
the wild. In 1914, the last known representative of her species, Martha,
died in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo.
This stunningly illustrated book tells the astonishing story of North
America's Passenger Pigeon, a bird species that--like the Tyrannosaur,
the Mammoth, and the Dodo--has become one of the great icons of
extinction. Errol Fuller describes how these fast, agile, and handsomely
plumaged birds were immortalized by the ornithologist and painter John
James Audubon, and captured the imagination of writers such as James
Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. He shows how
widespread deforestation, the demand for cheap and plentiful pigeon
meat, and the indiscriminate killing of Passenger Pigeons for sport led
to their catastrophic decline. Fuller provides an evocative memorial to
a bird species that was once so important to the ecology of North
America, and reminds us of just how fragile the natural world can be.
Published in the centennial year of Martha's death, The Passenger
Pigeon features rare archival images as well as haunting photos of live
birds.
