I would also suggest that the Passenger Pigeon's very nature (unlike the
Rock Dove) made them easy targets and at extreme risk for extinction from
human hunting and short-sightedness. I've recently been reading a book
unrelated to birding called Moving Off the Map by Thomas G. Bandy (in a
nutshell, it's about traditional church behavior and how they need to
change -- unfortunately the author does not cite his sources). Anyway the
author equates current church behavior with the characteristics of the
Passenger Pigeon. He may stretch it a bit to make it fit his church model,
but here goes. I'd be interested to hear substantiated opposing thoughts
in case any of these bits are off the mark.

According to Bandy . . .

First, the Passenger Pigeons were strictly monogamous with both males and
females sharing parenting responsibilities. Their mutual preoccupation
with children (and their partner) made them uninterested in breeding with
unattached birds, so gene pool diversity suffered. [ I guess this wouldn't
be an issue if other habits and human impact were not factors, but given
the hard times caused by humans, more adaptive genetic diversity might have
helped them survive. ]

Second, the birds were very gregarious. Thousands would nest in a single
tree. If the tree was weak or otherwise poorly chosen, collapsing branches
would result in many deaths. Or perhaps the location itself became
ill-suited to a nest site. The problems is they wouldn't recognize this
and spread out, as it was important to them to stick together.

Third, the gregarious nature made them ill-equipped to respond to outside
pressure (over-hunting). The hunter would capture one bird and tie its
feet to a rail or "stool" in the middle of a field [hence the term
stool-pigeon]. Others would flock to this bird, and the hunter could
simply walk in and club them to death.

=========================================
Ned McGarry
Kirkland, WA
nmcgarry at gte.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Dale Goble [SMTP:gobled at uidaho.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 09, 1999 7:44 AM
Cc: Tweeters
Subject: Re: In defense of the downtrodden


On Sat, 7 Aug 1999 MBlanchrd at aol.com wrote:

> This is only my opinion, mind you, but..........I have a theory that the
> introduction of the rock dove (brought over by the Pilgrims as a food
> source) was the beginning of the end for the passenger pigeon. Yes, I
know
> that humans shot them in the hundreds of thousands.......but I believe
that
> the rock dove brought diseases with it that our passenger pigeon had no
> defenses against. Just like the Indians were decimated by smallpox and
other
> diseases, the rock dove's diseases probably put the passenger pigeon on
that
> slippery slope to extinction. I've never seen anything in any scientific
> literature to back this up. It's just a hunch.

The two species occupied very different niches and thus were not in
competition. The best current understanding of why passenger pigeons went
extinct is that they were hunted to a point where their population dropped
below that required to breed.

Dale Goble
Moscow