Steve Sullivan of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum explains that the bird was hunted so rabidly it wasn't able to reproduce at a high enough rate.
by Aimee Levitt
In the early 1800s, when passenger pigeons comprised one quarter of the bird population east of the Mississippi, a flock flying over what's now Chicago could darken the sky for three days. By 1874, when an Evanstonian named J.G. Allyn killed this specimen and donated it to the Chicago Academy of Sciences (where it was preserved and stuffed), hunters in Wisconsin could bring down 1,200 pigeons before breakfast and cooks could buy birds ready for eating by the barrel.…[ Read more ]