The most interesting information I have was obtained from Mr. Birney Jennison, his son, who advised me a few days ago while we were on our way to Point Lookout, Saginaw Bay, that about the 15th of July, this year, he saw a pair of these birds in a swale at Point Lookout while roaming through the woods. He and I visited the same locality about two weeks after that, but saw nothing of them. Of course there is some likelihood that the birds Mr. Jennison saw may have been the common Carolina doves. Mr. Birney Jennison also had a great deal of experience with this bird in his younger days about Bay City, and there would appear to be no question as to his ability to accurately identify the bird.
From Mr. Neal Brown, Warsaw, Wis., May 20, 1904:
Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.
Dear Sir:—Your favor at hand with reference to the wild pigeon. It was, I think, three or four years ago that, in hunting with Mr. Emerson Hough near Babcock in this State in September, we killed an unmistakable wild pigeon. I saw a few pigeons in the woods in Forest County, in this State, about fifteen years ago. About seven years ago I saw three near Wausau and shot one of them. There was a pigeon roost for many years in Wood County, in this State, but it has long since disappeared.
When I was a boy in southern Wisconsin in the 60's and 70's, wild pigeons were so numerous as to almost darken the air. In the early 70's there was a small roost on Bark River, near Ft. Atkinson, in this State.
The wild pigeon had practically disappeared in southern Wisconsin as early as 1880, in fact, it was two or three years before that that I saw the last of them.
Charles W. Ward of Queens, L. I., New York, reports that in October, 1883, he saw a flock of at least one hundred Passenger Pigeons along the Manistee River in Township 26-5 and the following year about one dozen nested in a Spruce swamp near Orchard Lake on his old homestead. He often saw the nest and the birds. He remembers the time as being the season of the year when huckleberries were ripe, for he was berry-picking when he first observed them.
The writer of the following newspaper clipping of recent date is emphatically skeptical regarding the present-day existence of even an isolated pigeon:
LAST PIGEON FLIGHT IN IOSCO IN 1880