Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger Pigeons

Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger Pigeons PDF Author: John Wilson Foster
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1910749338
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This is a story of a scarcely credible abundance, of flocks of birds so vast they made the sky invisible. It is also a story of a collapse into extinction so startling as to provoke a mystery. In the fate of the North American passenger pigeon we can read much of the story of wild America—the astonishment that accompanied its discovery, the allure of its natural “productions” the ruthless exploitation of its “commodities” and the ultimate betrayal of its peculiar genius. And in the bird’s fate can be read, too, the essential vulnerability of species, the unpredictable passage of life itself.

Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger Pigeons

Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger Pigeons PDF Author: John Wilson Foster
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1910749338
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This is a story of a scarcely credible abundance, of flocks of birds so vast they made the sky invisible. It is also a story of a collapse into extinction so startling as to provoke a mystery. In the fate of the North American passenger pigeon we can read much of the story of wild America—the astonishment that accompanied its discovery, the allure of its natural “productions” the ruthless exploitation of its “commodities” and the ultimate betrayal of its peculiar genius. And in the bird’s fate can be read, too, the essential vulnerability of species, the unpredictable passage of life itself.

Pilgrims of the Air

Pilgrims of the Air PDF Author: John Wilson Foster
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910749791
Category : Passenger pigeon
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description


A Feathered River Across the Sky

A Feathered River Across the Sky PDF Author: Joel Greenberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620405369
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This beautifully written cautionary tale reveals how passenger pigeons have become extinct and how no series effort was made to protect this species that inspired awe in the likes of John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau and James Fenimore Cooper until it was too late.

The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon PDF Author: W. B. Mershon
Publisher: Theclassics.Us
ISBN: 9781230296586
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII The Last of the Pigeons From "The Auk, ' July, 1897, under the title " Additional Records of the Passenger Pigeon {Ectofistes migratorius.)" MOST of the notes on the Passenger Pigeon recorded in the past year have referred to single birds or pairs. It is with much pleasure that I now call attention to a flock of some fifty, observed in southern Missouri. I am not only greatly indebted to Mr. Chas. H. Holden, jr., for this interesting information, but for the present of a beautiful pair which he sent me in the flesh, he having shot them as they flew rapidly overhead. Mr. Holden was, at the time (December 17, 1896), hunting quail in Artie, Oregon County, Mo. The residents of this hamlet had not seen any pigeons there before in some years. Simon Pokagon, Chief of the remaining Pottawattamie tribe, and probably the best posted man on the wild pigeon in Michigan, writes me under date of October 16, 1896: "I am creditably informed that there was a small nesting of pigeons last spring not far from the headwaters of the Au Sable River in Michigan." Mr. Chase S. Osborn, State Game and Fish Warden of Michigan, under date, SaultSte. Marie, March 2, 1897, writes: "Passenger Pigeons are now very rare indeed in Michigan, but some have been seen in the eastern parts of Chippewa County, in the upper peninsula, every year. As many as a dozen or more were seen in this section in one flock last year, and I have reason to believe that they breed here in a small way. One came into this city last summer and attracted a great deal of attention by flying and circling through the air with the tame pigeons. I have a bill in the Legislature of Michigan, closing the season for killing wild pigeons for ten years." RUTHVEN DEANE, Chicago, 111. From "The...

In a Harbour Green

In a Harbour Green PDF Author: George O’Brien
Publisher: Merrion Press
ISBN: 1788550900
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Novelist, short-story writer, critic, memoirist, broadcaster and journalist: Benedict Kiely (1919–2007) was not only one of the best known but one of the most artistically and culturally distinctive men of letters of his day. His fascination with the island of Ireland, the myths and memories of its people, and the many-voiced quality of its traditions, has secured for him a unique place in the country’s literary history. His substantial body of fiction and non-fiction is a repository of lore and learning, and amply rewards not only the interest shown in it over many years by his popularity among the general public, but also that of Irish and international literary scholarship. Strangely, however, despite his renowned reputation and canonical status, Kiely remains a writer whose work has generated surprisingly little secondary literature, academic or otherwise. This charming collection of twelve essays by some of Ireland’s foremost writers and esteemed international critics, in this, his centenary year, will breathe new life into Kiely’s work and place him back where he belongs, at the heart of Irish literature.

The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon PDF Author: William Butts Mershon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Birds
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description


The passenger pigeon ...

The passenger pigeon ... PDF Author: Pehr Kalm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pigeons
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Book Description


The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon PDF Author: Susan D. Morrison
Publisher: Crestwood House
ISBN: 9780896864573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
Discusses the history of the passenger pigeon, which at one time made up one-quarter of the birds of America but is now extinct.

The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon PDF Author: A. W. Schorger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258049881
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Published in 1955 by the University of Oklahoma Press, this is the classic study of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon, once probably the most numerous bird on the planet, made its home in the billion or so acres of primary forest that once covered North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Their flocks, a mile wide and up to 300 miles long, were so dense that they darkened the sky for hours and days as the flock passed overhead. Population estimates from the 19th century ranged from 1 billion to close to 4 billion birds. Total populations may have reached 5 billion birds and comprised up to 40% of the total number of birds in North America. This may be the only species for which the exact time of extinction is known. No appreciable decline in the numbers was noted until the late 1870s but, thereafter, their destruction took only twenty-five years. The immense roosting and nesting colonies invited over-hunting. Tens of thousands of individuals were harvested daily from nesting colonies, and shipped to markets in the east. Modern technology hastened the demise of the passenger pigeon. With the coming of the telegraph, the locations of flocks could be ascertained, and the birds relentlessly pursued. The last bird died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden before any competent ornithologists could write an account of the species. A. W. Schorger reconstructed the life history of the passenger pigeon. Through painstaking research, he examined every aspect of the species -- behavioral characteristics, feeding methods, traveling and roosting habits, nesting - and the various stages of the species encounter with man, from utilization by the Native American to extinction at the hands of white settlers. From the original reviews: "This really shocking book ought to be required reading for every thoughtful citizen" Audubon Magazine "Reads as fascinatingly as many a novel" Cleveland Plain Dealer "Prodigious" Newsweek "Absorbing" Scientific American "An excellent book" Michigan History

The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon PDF Author: W. B. Mershon
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781546428688
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This special re-print edition of W.B. Mershon's book "The Passenger Pigeon" provides information on the rise, fall and eventual extinction of the legendary Passenger Pigeon. Written in 1907, only a few years before the last living Passenger Pigeon perished from this earth, in the decades previously, these birds could once be counted in the billions on the North American continent. Mr. Mershon, who had a lifelong fascination with these birds, starts with some of the earliest written accounts of them when they appeared in flocks so large that they could block out the sun and travels forward in time until the birds had completely vanished from the wild and had been reduced to a few specimens living in zoos. Note: This edition is a perfect facsimile of the original edition and is not set in a modern typeface. As a result, some type characters and images might suffer from slight imperfections or minor shadows in the page background.