page_title: Bird colony
section_title: Human use
hierarchical_section_title: Bird colony / Human use
caption_attribution_description: Laysan Albatross egss collected from a colony on Laysan Island
context_page_description: A bird colony is a large congregation of individuals of one or more species of bird that nest or roost in proximity at a particular location. Many kinds of birds are known to congregate in groups of varying size; a congregation of nesting birds is called a breeding colony. Colonial nesting birds include seabirds such as auks and albatrosses; wetland species such as herons; and a few passerines such as weaverbirds, certain blackbirds, and some swallows. A group of birds congregating for rest is called a communal roost. Evidence of colonial nesting has been found in non-neornithine birds, in sediments from the Late Cretaceous of Romania.
context_section_description: Colony-nesting birds have been used by humans as a source of food in the form of eggs and meat, down for bedding, feathers for quill pens, and guano for fertilizer. Over-exploitation can be devastating to a colony, or even to an entire population of a colonial species.  For example, there was once a large seabird known as the great auk, which nested in colonies in the North Atlantic. Eggs and birds were used for a variety of purposes. Beginning in the 16th century, seafarers took the birds in especially great numbers to fill ships' larders, and by the mid-19th century, the great auk was extinct. Likewise, the short-tailed albatross of the North Pacific was heavily harvested at what seems to have been its primary colony on Torishima Island. Millions of birds were killed in less than two decades at the end of the 19th century. The species  survives, though endangered. In North America, the extermination of the highly gregarious passenger pigeon has been well documented.  The birds were hunted as if inexhaustible. Case in point: in 1871, in Wisconsin, an estimated 136 million pigeons nested in a dense congregation over a wide area; thousands of people were drawn to hunt the birds, shipping the squab to market by rail. The passenger pigeon is a famous example of a familiar bird going extinct in modern times.
  The use of seabird droppings as fertilizer, or guano, began with the Indigenous Peruvians, who collected it from sites along the coast of South America, such as the Chincha Islands. When, after the Spanish Conquest, the value of this fertilizer became known to the wider world, collection increased to the point where the supply nearly ran out, and other sources of guano had to be found.
caption: Eggs collected from a nesting bird colony on Laysan island. Early 1900s.
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