A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction

I enjoyed this book on many levels; as a factual, documented account of events leading up to the extinction of passenger pigeons, as a historical account of past attitudes in this country, and as a general lesson for today. Perhaps "enjoyed" is not the best choice of words, because it is an account of a tragedy. At one point, I found myself perturbed a bit with the author's seemingly dispassionate accounts of annihilating slaughters, one after another, region after region, year after year, described page after page, along with descriptions of throngs of pigeon hunters rejoicing in their wanton and wasteful kills. But I read on, though overwhelmed at times by the carnage. Later, in his analysis of the extinction, the author's condemnation of the carnage becomes clear. Indeed, this style is the style for such a well documented and researched piece. Any other approach would have been manipulative. The account is horrific enough. No manipulation is necessary.Anyone who follows current environmental issues will be struck by similarities in human responses to the extinction then, and our responses now to losses and changes in the natural world. There always seems to be an element of denial. Few people could believe then that passenger pigeons had become extinct. Similarly, many people today ignore various environmental issues and refuse to believe that human behavior might need to change, or that it might be responsible for these issues.Chapter footnotes are well worth reviewing, and the Bibliography provides numerous leads for anyone wishing to further his or her knowledge about passenger pigeons.A fascinating, detailed account.

This book was more than I bragained for and is a very emotional read. It starts out reviewing the passenger pigeon ecology, its amazing migrations and the movements of millions of passenger pigeons. I thought, what an amazing pigeon and I was thankful for buying and reading this book whch made this remarkable bird come alive again.However, in the second part of the book, Joel Greenberg has collected and published the actual accounts of how the passenger pigeon was slaughtered from the writings of the people who participated. This section of the book almost reads like a catalog titled "How to kill passenger pigeons". In these chapters, the book becomes a very difficult read - and a terrifying almost repititous account of how Americans carelessly slaughtered this remarkable animal for food, money and sport into extinction.I found the accounts of the pigeon's final nesting attempts in the last 10 years to be the most intense and poignent part of the book - you are shouting to yourself - "No, please stop the killings - these are the last birds" and even in these last years, the extent of the remaining pigeon population is astounding. Books like this are needed. Thanks for the author for writing it - it must have been a very difficult book emotionally to write.

This book describes in detail the factors which were responsible for the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. The spreading of telegraph lines made it impossible to keep the location of nesting colonies a secret. The spreading of railroads meant that from wherever the pigeons nested, they could be sent to market. But above all, the prevailing attitude that wherever the pigeons were, people had the right to slaughter them. Most shocking of all was the sending of thousands of pigeons to be used as targets for "sportsmen."The book also describes the efforts, ineffective as they were, to protect the pigeons. State laws were passed to protect them - after they had been exterminated in the state. Laws restricted shooting at the colonies, but not netting. The prevailing theme was "too little, too late."The only thing I missed in this book was a discussion of how attitudes and laws have changed to prevent further occurrence of such tragedies. Unfortunately, the same practices that resulted in extinction of the Passenger Pigeon still prevail in places such as southern Europe and North Africa.

I have always been fascinated with the plight of the passenger pigeon and other species driven to extinction due to human encroachment. People naturally want to exploit animals for profit or get rid of any that bother them and overkill animals for sport and fun.I would love to have seen a migration of the pigeons. Unfortunately, the destruction of crops and other problems they caused made their extinction inevitable. Imagine a flock of the size of the ones in the 1700's landing anywhere in the USA today! The stripping of all vegetation, breakage of trees and the huge amounts of excrement would be disastrous. Their inability to breed below a certain flock size and inability to adjust to change was the main reason they disappeared.

I read the reviews before buying, some were not glowing. I thought this book was outstanding. Exactly what I wanted to read and know. It doesn't read like a fast paced novel and it IS sad and thought provoking, but the level of research that went into this book was impressive. It is not a light read, but if you want to know what passenger pigeons were like, their relationship with humans, how their being here intertwined with our history on this continent then it is very informative and worth the read.

excellent

The book is a good account of "what went wrong" to cause the extinction of a native bird species and how the super-abundance of a species does not insure that species will live on forever. The extinction of the Passenger Pigeon should serve as a warning that humanity should never be cavalier in using Earth's resources nor in the way it deals with the planet's other inhabitants.

This book was in great condition. Very impressed.

What an interesting, tragic book. This is a very detailed read when it comes to dates and geographical county names, but its a fascinating read all the same. This insight into how a species goes from millions to zero, presented in such a way, feels like a preview into our future. We are all fading ridiculously away, one species at a time.

thanks!

A detailed, sensitive account of the passenger pigeon. If only we could see one.

Very happy with it. Great writer very enlightening. Thank you