The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-02-16
THE PASSENGER PIGEONS.

Mr.. A. Clinton Wilmerding, of
New York city, writing under date
of January 4, 1907, to the Fo,est and
.St,SGnz, says:
The following remarks on wild
pigeons are from notes made by the
writer during a conversation with Mr..
Thomas Hand, of Netherwood, N. J.,
on Dec. 80, last. Mr.. Hand was en-
gagged in trapping passenger pigeons
for long time prior to their sudden
disappearance. He is not one who
exaggerates, but all his statements
are made il a quiet, unassuming
manner that is very convincing:
Sometimes he and others in his
district shipped no barrels of pigeons
a day for sixty to seventy days run
ming, 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 agoii:
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 flight
flew very high up, so that they look
ed like very small patches individual
ly-clear out of gunshot.
The accepted season for their ex-
termination in that part of the country
was a tremendous fog that lasted
about 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 Canadian
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 catastro-
phe, he stated that there could be no
fair estimate, but his opinion was
that their were millions Of tons of
tuSSC DlIQS QCSllOyCQ.
When the trappers set their nets
for these birds-which was nearly al
ways near their nesting or roosting
place-in the mornings they caught
what was called the Tom 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 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 decomposed quickly. and for
the reason that people would not pur-
chase them after finding what they
had fed on, the trappers had to pull
the crops out of each bird before
shipping. The old birds would leave
the young one in its nest when re-
Stunning the flight, at certain period,
with the result that the helpless
young were preyed upon to tremen-
dous extent by the hawks, owls, and
crows.
Shelby, Mich, was generally the
center of the biggest fight.
The highest price Mr.. Hand ever
got for these birds was 81 a dozen
when their was a good demand for
for them, and from that down to ff-
teen cents a 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 mar
kets, as "corn fed" birds and there
by get very much enlarged figure
for them. So, with this in view,
they built a series of enclosures in
the center of the town in some open
lots, Shelby being then but village,
and they took all the live birds that
were brought to them, paying twelve
cents dozen for them. Soon, how
ever, as many of the birds died and
could not be reached without consid-
cradle destruction to the live birds
that hardly had moving room in these
enclosures, the stencil became very
great, with the result that some doc
tor intimated that one or two local
cases of sickness resulted therefrom,
the final outcome being that the ma
tives went there one night and de-
stroyed all the Enclosures, liberatin G
an estimated number of 600, 900
birds.
Mr.. Hand thinks that the great
disaster to the birds in the fog occur
red in the late seventies, as he was
trapping them in 1876, and subse-
quent to that time, after which they
all disappeared. The pigeons at that
time were near Bellefontaine, and
crossed the lake near Ashtabula,