The Passenger Pigeon was once one of the most numerous birds in North America. From the 1600s through early 1800s, people wrote of flocks that filled the sky as far as they eye could see, with some individual flocks estimated at over 2 billion birds. However, the Passenger Pigeon was driven to extinction by uncontrolled commercial hunting for their meat. Due to their tendency to both migrate and breed in large dense flocks, they were easy targets for hunters, who often used large mesh nets to catch them by the thousands. By 1880, there were no longer enough birds for hunting to be commercially profitable, and the species was largely left on its own to recover. Although several thousand birds were left at that time, populations continued to plummet. It was thought their strong communal nature made them much less effective breeders when populations were thin and dispersed. The last wild specimens were collected at the beginning of the 20th century, and the last bird of the species died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Note the photo to the right is of a mounted specimen.
