Passenger pigeon mount, juvenile male
Sometimes, museums collect things when they are commonplace only for the items to become rare and important later. This mount of a passenger pigeon was collected by another museum in the 19th century, but its mission changed so it transferred the pigeon to The Children’s Museum. At the height of their population, between 3 and 5 billion passenger pigeons lived in North America, constituting as much as 40% of the continent’s total bird population!
In 1813, John James Audubon described that “The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse . . . and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.”
Due to deforestation and commercial hunting on a massive scale, their numbers declined until the last passenger pigeon in the wild was shot in Laurel, Indiana, in 1902, rendering the species extinct. Too late for passenger pigeons, their demise increased public awareness and outcry for stronger wildlife conservation laws to save other species. Today, about 1,600 passenger pigeon mounts and skins remain in collections around the world, where they are used to educate visitors about the fragile nature of life.
