I was waiting at St Pancras Station one morning this week for the train home. I was early. I’m almost always early. St Pancras station, though it is large, feels more like an open air station than most London stations. Now I know there has to be some sort of hole to let the trains…
Tag: passenger pigeon
It’s that day again
1 September 1914 saw the death of a female Passenger Pigeon in Cincinnati Zoo. That bird was called Martha and was the last Passenger Pigeon to draw breath – the last individual of what had not long before been the most numerous bird species on this planet. This is my book on the subject (still…
Various
I went to the pictures last night – to see Mary Queen of Scots. Good film! I recommend it. She had her head lopped off down the road from here at Fotheringhay. The anniversary comes up on 8 February. It’s impossible for me to watch a film without noticing the bird noises. There were some…
Mellow Yellow but no Turtles
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My favourite local farmer, Duncan Farrington, has been developing new delicious products with his prize-winning cold-pressed rapeseed oil. This Chilli and Cumin dressing is delicious – and I know it comes from a local farm with high environmental standards too. Duncan tells me that he didn’t see a Turtle Dove on his farm this year…
Passenger Pigeon Day
On 1 September 1914, the last Passenger Pigeon on Earth, named Martha, died of old age in a cage in Cincinatti Zoo. Once the most numerous bird on Earth, the last Passenger Pigeon in the wild expired in 1900 or perhaps 1901 and the bird was known only in captivity after that. A bird that…
Missed this one!
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Having been in the USA for a significant chunk of time recently, I noticed this press release. It refers to the extinct Carolina Parakeet – a species which was probably last seeen in the wild in 1904, but whose last individual survivor died in Cincinnati Zoo (in the same cage that housed the last Passenger…
Liverpool, last week
I spent a few days in Liverpool last week where I added Oystercatcher to my Aintree bird list and several hundred pounds to my bank balance. I spent some great time with some close friends and it was kind of them to set it up as a birthday treat for me. But I also took…
The Passenger Pigeon’s DNA
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…
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…
Bank holiday book review – Flock Together by B. J. Hollars
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Reviewed by Ian Carter I tried very hard to like this book and, in the end, despite the rather relentless ‘chatty’ style of writing, I think I just about got there. It’s certainly a hard book to categorise. In part, it’s a history of recently extinct birds in the USA and the individuals…