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thinking about passenger pigeons

A good amount of trees make nuts right? Lots of animals want to eat nuts. To prevent critters eating all of them, some trees produce a small crop most years to keep numbers down, and then one year they’ll make so many there’s no way all of them will be eaten. This is called masting

Enter the Passenger Pigeon. They would fly from area to area in huge flocks looking for masts. Then perhaps they found a chestnut, oak, or other mast producing plant. When they did find one they would drop down en masse. These guys would be everywhere. The populations were estimated to be somewhere around 3 billion before they declined and eventually went extinct. For reference of how huge a number this was, in North America the population of European starling is a little over 200 million. These giant numbers resulted in massive flocks. These massive flocks resulted in a very safety in numbers level of instincts against predators. On their nesting grounds in the Great Lakes region there were historical accounts of raccoons gorging themselves on the birds until their belly was dragging on the ground. There were so many it didn’t even make a dent in the population.

Now, colonists are in the picture now. In precolonial times, native americans harvested the birds but never enough to really dent the population. At first, they were just being hunted for subsistence, which didn’t make much of a dent either. When the numbers really started to tank at the second half of the 19th century. Forests with those masts the pigeons need are being cut down for timber. Two seemingly unrelated advances have just been invented: the train and the telegraph. These two inventions would then been be used to commercially hunt the birds. Passenger pigeons would nest in huge colonies up in trees. Hunters would find these and use the telegraph to tell others where it was. Then, the trains would then transport them quickly there. They used all manner of gruesome ways to kill em I won’t mention here. They were then transported and sold. Not even a lot made it without starting to go bad first. So many little pigeon bodies wasted. They weren’t just for human consumption either, there were some being grinded up to feed pigs. This kept going and going until someone there weren’t enough left for this. Now, the flocks that were left weren’t nearly as big as they should’ve been. Their strategy was to overwhelm predators with numbers. In 1914, the last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo

Anyways I quit my yapping, and apologies for poor grammar/spelling errors/ use of commas where they shouldn’t be this is rambling

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The Astronomicum Caesarium --- An instructional on how to use an astrolabe. Written by Petrus Apianus, illustrated by Michael Ostendorfer, printed by Georg and Petrus Apianus

Germany, May 1540

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Vireo Showdown; Bracket 3, Semi-Finals

Fun Fact!

Plumbeous: the drabbest of the "Solitary Vireo" complex, completely devoid of any yellow compared to their cousins.

Mangrove: despite the name, they're not actually found in mangroves through most of the range. The Pacific population prefers them, while the Caribbean population is more general.

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For more information on these birds, check out these Species Features:

Mangrove Vireo | Plumbeous Vireo

Image Sources: Plumbeous (Jim Merritt); Mangrove (Guillermo Saborío Vega);

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What's the Bird?

Location: Ramsey, Minnesota

Date: April

We ask that discussion under questions be limited to how you came to your conclusion, not what your conclusion was.

Happy Birding!

Keep the game alive! Submit a bird HERE

Bird-368 graciously submitted by @finalgirlart

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children have enamel teeth ig?

name one difference between birds and children

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i love grass veneers. they have one of the shapes of all time

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Swallow, swift, nightjar & house martins 🪶

A drawing commissioned by Gabo Wildlife, an organisation working tirelessly to rescue and rehabilitate migratory birds. Swifts and nightjars especially are some of my favourite birds and it was wonderful to focus on them with this piece

[prints]

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oh yeah you're mommy's bad little fruit fly aren't you 😈

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Hello, bird friends. I am trying to compile some of the most christmasy/ wintery birds there are. I only know what I associate with winter/ christmas and what my culture (in this case England) associates with winter/christmas so I would love to know what else is out there - A

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“[Researchers] found there was no difference in the diversity of species that visited sown wildflower meadows in cities compared with natural ones, according to the study published in the journal Ecological Entomology, and led by researchers from Warsaw University. The researchers said: ‘In inner-city areas, flower meadows can compensate insects for the lack of large natural meadows that are usually found in the countryside.’

This study confirmed that small areas of urban wildflowers have a high concentration of pollinating insects, and are as valuable to many pollinators as larger areas of natural meadow that you would typically find rurally. ‘In this way, we can alleviate the hostile environment of urban space for wildlife,’ the researchers wrote.”

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i think it can digging in the sand for cover

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Cant stop thinking about cedar waxwings 😭😭😭

They literally have wax in their wings 😭😭😭

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every time I see someone from outside australia (or inside australia tbh) say “everything in australia wants to kill you lol” I want to scream. you are buying into colonial narratives! you are reinforcing the construction of the “aussie battler”! you are ignoring the way first nations people have lived with the land for centuries! you are participating in the homogenisation of australia in your belief that this is a land that needs to be tamed! shut up shut up shut up

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Yeah this one hurts

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me and the boys

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Grackle with Chip