I’ll always be interested in anything to do with the Passenger Pigeon – the formerly most abundant species on Earth but which was driven to extinction, finally, on 1 September 1914. A new paper in Science suggests that Passenger Pigeons had a very low genetic diversity. the authors describe this as surprising but I’m not…
Category: passenger pigeon
Passenger Pigeon day
‘On 1 September 1914, between midday and 1 pm, in the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Cincinnati, Ohio, a pigeon breathed her last, and with her died her species. The pigeon was known as Martha, and the species was the Passenger Pigeon. Amongst all extinctions, this example remains unusual in two respects: the precision with which…
Martha
Remember I had that lovely letter from Åsa the other day? Well here is the drawing that arrived in the post the other day. Isn’t that wonderful – what a lovely present! And here is the detail of Martha A Message from Martha by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury.
A message from Åsa; a message from Sweden
Dear Mark, First I would like to thank you for your beautiful and sad book about the passenger pigeon. I came across it by chance as I looked into a bookshop´s window in Amsterdam. There it was, a small, red book with the word passenger pigeon written across it. I went in and bought it….
Sunday book review – A Sky Full of Birds by Matt Merritt
This is a book about bird gatherings from seabird colonies to winter roosts. Having spent a frustrating evening recently looking for a Pied Wagtail roost that wasn’t there I enjoyed hearing of Matt Merritt’s successes. A huge flock of birds is a sight to be seen – and sometimes a sound to be heard and…