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Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

  • A portrait of a passenger pigeon from 1908. By this point, wild passenger pigeons had already vanished. The last of the species, a captive pigeon named Martha, died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. (credit: John Henry Hintermeister / Wikimedia Commons)
    The Pigeons’ Last Passage
    Ellie Katz
    Passenger pigeons were once the most abundant bird in North America. But in 1914, they went extinct. Most of their last nesting grounds hugged the Great Lakes. What was it like to experience these birds? And what are we left with when we lose a species?