The passenger pigeon’s extinction: How a once-abundant bird vanished forever

There are few stories in nature as heartbreaking as that of the passenger pigeon. It is not because the bird was rare or fragile. It was quite the opposite.The passenger pigeon was once considered the most abundant bird in North America. Scientists estimate that between 3 and 5 billion passenger pigeons lived across the continent before European settlement. Their flocks were so enormous that people described them as rivers flowing through the sky. Some reported that the birds passed overhead for hours, even days, blocking sunlight and filling forests with an endless chorus of wings.Then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye in historical terms, they were gone.On September 1, 1914, the last known passenger pigeon, named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her death marked the end of a species that had once seemed impossible to erase.