Extinct Birds : Passenger Pigeon

Once a common bird of eastern North America, the passenger pigeon became extinct very quickly. Early records, beginning in 1630, describe its migrations, roosting and nesting in enormous numbers, but by 1912 there were rewards offered for evidence of a live, wild bird.

Although there is a question of the natural survival of a bird that roosted in numbers that destroyed forests, that laid one or two eggs in a flimsy nest, and that suffered losses from overcrowding and nestling mortality, humans finally doomed the bird to extinction. Shot, trapped, and clubbed for market, hog food, and sport, it could not survive. The world's last passenger pigeon died in a zoo in 1914.