Students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago took a class trip to the city’s Field Museum for a natural history illustration class. The students had to draw three bird heads and three birds’ feet. Junior Michelle Flitman chose first the Rufous Hornbill, a bird native to the
Not that long ago, Passenger Pigeons filled the skies. Some flocks, with more than a billion birds, took four days to pass overhead. Aldo Leopold called the pigeon "a biological storm." Now they are extinct, gone forever from our world. But other birds remain! This spring, go out and
In a forest on Martha’s Vineyard, a Heath Hen struts through the brush. Columbus, Ohio, harbors a Passenger Pigeon. In Okeechobee, Florida, you can find a Carolina Parakeet. A Great Auk scans the Atlantic Ocean from atop a rock on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. A sea-going Labrador Duck rests
On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. It’s hard to believe there were billions of Passenger Pigeons in the early nineteenth century. By 1900, there were none left in the wild. The last Passenger Pigeon became a symbol of how easily we
The last Passenger Pigeon in the world died on September 1, 1914. What happened to these lovely long-tailed doves? Huge flocks offered easy shooting, and the birds were hunted to extinction. We now have the awareness and tools to make sure that over-harvest and loss of habitat don't happen
