Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — THEY ARE DISAPPOINTING. [ARTICLE]

THEY ARE DISAPPOINTING.

Wild Pigeons Are Fist BeeonUng Extinct. The last great flight of wild pigeons to visit the United States was in 1876, but before that time such visitations were not uncommon. Now, however, a wild pigeon is rarely seen in some localities, where once the birds were plentiful They have all been driven to the far West, but are in such small flocks that, as composed with the “great flight” in 1876, they seem insignificant. The news of the flight in March, 1876, first came from Barnum’s, a small village in Northern New York. The air, say those who saw, it, suddenly became black with an enless flock of wild pigeons which was passing over that part of the country going northward. For over half an hour the flight continued in na incessant procession, obstructing all view of the sVy, and giving to the surroundings the somber appearance caused by the gathering and passing of thunder clouds. It was not known at that time how far the flock extended to the eastward, but it was subsequently learned, that it reached over twelve miles in a continuous line. The birds were flying too high to be shot at with any degrees of-success, although, during the flight numbers of them were killed by unusually fortunate gunners. Old hunters said that the pigeons were seeking nesting places, but from the altitude of their flight it is not probable that they would rest short of the Canadian forests. Two days afterward, however, lumbermen from the head-waters of the Beaverkill and the beech woods of the adjacent wildernesses of Sullivan, Delaware, and Ulster counties brought in the news that those regions bad been taken in possession by wild pigeons in untold numbers, and that they were preparing for the nesting season.

Unparalleled sport Was anticipated for the season after the nesting was over, but unfortunately severe weather came on soon after the birds had begun their nesting. Snow fell to the depth of a foot all through that region. After the storm had ceased the game constables and woodsmen noticed an unusual and peculiar stir among the birds throughout the length and breadth of the great roost, and at noon on the fifth day of their coming into the wilderness the pigeons began rising and taking flight, and in a few hours not a pigeon was to be found in the entire territory. They flew almost due west That same day, before 1 o’clock in theafternoon. Clint Waters and Isaac Bennett, woodchoppers and bark peelers, were in the depths of the Pocono beech woods, then a vast forest covering largq areas in Pike, Wayne, Luzerne and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania. The sun was shining brightly, when suddenly it was hidden as if by a dark cloud, and a noise like that produced by a gale of wind or the roll of distant thunder broke on their ears. Simultaneously the woods began filling with wild pigeons. Tree after tree was filled, and still the air was black with an apparently intermin. able mass of birds. The pigeons settled down in the trees in such numbers that great branches broke beneath their weight, and this occurring on every hand through the woods was like a windfall in the forest. The two men did not know where the pigeons had come from so suddenly, but when, in the course of time, the news of their presence in the Pennsylvania wilderness reached Sullivan County, people there knew that the pigeons were the ones that had been driven from the Beaverkill County by the great snow storm. The nearest point in the Pennsylvania woods where the birds rested after their flight from New York State is 45 miles from the Beaverskill, almost due west, showing that the pigeons must have flown nearly a mile, a minute in changing their resting place. It was after ward learned that the area covered bv the roost was eight miles in length and four miles wide. That was the last visitation of wild pigeons in localities so far east in the United States where roosting was formerly a frequent occurrence. The furthest east the wild pigeons have roosted since then was in Northwestern Pennsylvania in 1881. Since then the birds have entirely disappeared from the east, and will never be seen here again. They have been driven to the wilds of Michigan, the Indian Territory, and other isolated haunts, and in a few years will be numbered among the extinct birds of the American continent.