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Monuments to the Pigeon
"Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know."
-- Aldo Leopold, 1947
On September 1, 1914, a twenty-nine-year-old passenger pigeon named Martha died at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was the last of her kind. Once the most populous bird in North America -- numbering in the billions -- passenger pigeons vanished with startling speed. Habitat destruction and large-scale hunting were chiefly to blame. More than any other extinct species, the passenger pigeon has come to symbolize the natural abundance of early America and the changes wrought by human intervention. The story of these birds has captivated ornithologists and artists for more than a century. Paintings, poems, and personal accounts vividly describe their mass migrations when millions of pigeons crossed the countryside in search of food and forest habitats. These immense flocks were often likened to rivers, torrents, and tornadoes. The sense of wonder and disbelief provoked by such sightings lives on today in the work of artists James Prosek, Rachel Berwick, and Walton Ford. Their monumental works reimagine the lost bird and ponder its haunting disappearance. |