Mourning Doves are reassuring, comforting birds; always around, always

Mourning Doves are reassuring, comforting birds; always around, always elegant. Their whistling wings and low, cooing hoots remind me of the steadiness of the natural world. Did the wings of the extinct Passenger Pigeon sing with the wind as do those of the Mourning Dove. I find no comments on this in the literature. There are references to the roar from the wings of a flock of Passenger Pigeons. It must have been a mighty sound for these birds, gone forever from the world, traveled in flocks of millions.

In 1808, my personal hero — the Father of American Ornithology — Alexander Wilson estimated a flock of Passenger Pigeons to contain two and a quarter billion birds. This occurred during spring migration in Kentucky. The mass of pigeons was a mile wide and took four hours to pass. | Wilson was a careful, prudent man, not prone to exaggeration as was his contemporary, John James Audubon.

The vast numbers of wildlife encountered by early observers did lead to exaggeration. That is understandable for the numbers of ducks, geese, swans and “rice birds” (Bobolinks) must have been awesome. Two and a quarter billion Passenger Pigeons is impossible for me to comprehend; my imagination cannot deal with the figure. Flocks of Passenger Pigeons are all gone and live only in books and not even in memory any more.

As to memory I am not so sure. My father told me of hearing his grandfather tell of flocks of pigeons passing over North Carolina in such numbers that “ ... they cast a shadow over the land.” (How odd that I remember my father’s exact words) Alexander Wilson commented that the flock he encountered “ ... darkened the sun.”

The last Passenger Pigeon, a female named !■ Martha, died at the age of 29 on Sept. 1, 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. If I could , somehow send myself backward 190 years and say to Alexander Wilson, “They will all be gone in 84 years.”