The Pigeon in Manitoba [G]
By George E. Atkinson
[G] This paper was read at a meeting of the Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society at Winnepeg in 1905, by the author, a naturalist, residing at Portage la Prairie.
W
WHILE the biological history of any country records the decrease and disappearance of many forms of life due to just or unjust circumstances, it remains for the historical records of North America to reveal a career of human selfishness which may be considered the paragon. Within four centuries of North American civilization (or modified barbarism) we can be credited with the wiping into the past of at least three species of animal life originally so phenomenally abundant and so strikingly characteristic in themselves as to evoke the wonder and amazement of the entire world. And, sad to relate, so effectual has been the extermination, that it is doubtful if our descendants a few generations hence will be able to learn anything whatever about them save through the medium of books. While herein again we shall be just subjects of their censure for having manifestly failed to preserve in history's archives any material amount of specific information.
The early settlers landing upon the Atlantic coast between Newfoundland and the Carolinas found them in possession of armies of great auks, and the few scraps of authenticated history which we now possess disclose a most iniquitous course of wanton slaughter and destruction which ended in the complete extinction of the bird over sixty years ago. Yet in the face of this destruction there remain but four mounted specimens and two eggs in the collections of North America to-day, while but seventy skins remain in the collections of the entire world.
If possible, more ruthless and inhuman was the carnage waged against the noble buffalo, the countless thousands of which roaming over virgin prairies excited the wonder and amazement of the entire sporting and scientific world, and which, to-day, are represented only in the zoölogical parks, where all individuality will eventually be lost in domestication.
Coincident almost with the passing of the buffalo we have to record the decline and fall of the Passenger Pigeon, a bird which aroused the excitement and wonder of the entire world during the first half of the last century because of its phenomenal numbers; a bird also which stood out unique in character and individuality among the 300 described pigeons of the world and which won the admiration of every ornithologist who was fortunate enough to have experience with it living or dead. Yet it was not exempt from the oppression of its human foe, who has been instrumental, through interference with the breeding and feeding grounds and through a continued persecution and ruthless slaughter for the market, in reducing the species almost beyond the hope of salvation.
The Passenger Pigeon, the species under observation, was first described under the genus Columba, or type pigeons, but subsequently Swainson separated it from these and placed it under the genus Ectopistes because of the greater length of wing and tail.
Generically named Ectopistes, meaning moving about or wandering, and specifically named Migratoria, meaning migratory, we have a technical name implying not only a species of migrating annually to and from their breeding ground, but one given to moving about from season to season, selecting the most congenial environment for both breeding and feeding.