The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1907-03-08
THE PASSENGER PIGEONS,

uary 4, 1907, to the "Forest and
Stream" says:
The following remarks on wild
pigeons ale from notes made by the
writer during conversation with Mr..
Thomas Hand, of, Netherwood, N.
j., on Dec. 80, last. Mr.. Hand was
engaged in trapping passenger pig
cons for long time prior to their
sudden disappearance. He is not one
who exaggerates, but all his state
ments are made in quiet, unassum.
ing manner that is convincing:
Sometimes he and others in his dis.
trict shipped ITO barrels of pigeons
day for sixty to seventy days running
to New York. These came from Ohio
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin
and Minnesota.
The hens laid but one egg at each
nesting.
Mr.. Hand saw some focks of wild
pigeons fifteen to twenty years ago in
Minnesota. The flight always occu-
pied two or three days, and the birds
all came at one time, none struggling
along after-that is, no particular
quantities. The birds in their fight
flew very high up, so that they looked
like very small patches Individuality
clear out Of gunshot.
The accepted season for their ex-
termination in that part of the country
was tremendous fog that lasted
four days, and the birds in taking
their regular course across Lake Erie
became bewildered and were finally
lost and drowned in the lake. The
natives on the madam side said they
were washed up on the shore in "wind-
rows" so that they had to go from the
villages and bury them. When Mr..
Hand was asked how many were lost
in this catastrophe, he stated that
there could be no fair estimate, but his
opinion was that their were "milliens
of tons" of these birds destroyed.
When the trappers set their nests
for these bilds-wbch was nearly al
ways near their nesting OF reosting
place-in the mornings they caught
what was called the "Tem" fight,
indicating the male birds. In the
afternoon the hens would come off the
nests, and all the birds caught at that
time of day were hens.
At one time in a certain locality the
pigeons had eaten up all the spring
wheat, and the trappers found that
they were feeding after that on small
caterpillars or inch worms, finding
their crops full of them. In consequence
OF this. as the worms eaten decempos.
ed quickly, and for the reason that
people would not purchase them after
finding what they had fed on, the trep-
pers had to pull the crops out of each
bird before shipping. The old birds
would leave the young one in it's nest
when resuming the fight, at a GER
tain period, with the result that the
helpless young were preyed upon to
tremendous extent by the hawks,
owls, and crows.
Shelby, Mich, was generally the
center of the biggest flight.
The highest price Mr.. Hand ever
got for these birds was 81 a dozen
when their was good demand for
them, and from that down to fifteen
cents dozen. He shipped nearly all
of the birds that he sent to New York
to Mr.. N. Durham, New York city.
Two enterprising fellows from Bos-
ton got an idea that they could buy
all the live birds that came to Shelby,
put them in Enclosures, feed them and
ship them to the different markets,
as "corn fed'' birds and thereby get
very much enlarged figure for them.
So, with this in view, they built
series Of Enclosures in the center of
the town in some open lots, Shelby
being then but a village, and they
took all the live birds that were
brought to them paying twelve cents
a dozen for them. Soon, however, as
many OF the birds died and could not
be reached without considerable des.
truction to tue live birds that hardly
had moving room in these Enclosures,
the stencil became very great, with
the result that some doctor intimated
that one or two local cases of sickness
resulted therefrom, the final outcome
being that the natives went there one
night and destroyed all the Enclosures
liberating an estimated number of
of 600 900 birds.
Mr.. Hand thinks that the great dis.
aster to the birds in the fog occurred
in the late seventies, as he was trapp-
| tl,o,, 1919 and euhe,ouonk