It hunted with ease eating raspberries, strawberries, acorns, beechmast, grain, grapes and chestnuts. The passenger pigeon was known to be innumerable and widespread over the eastern U.S. The female is more drab-colored above and a dull white beneath with only a trace of the male brilliance around the neck. The legs and feet are red while the neck is marked with violet, green, gold feathers. The bill is black, the iris of the eye is red and a head marked a dusky blue. The passenger pigeon was about the size of a turtle dove but had a long wedge shape tail, black in color, and white undercoating.
The bird was the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), meaning the wanderer. The bird was so numerous that the sun was blotted out for half a day at a time.īy the 20th century, this bird had disappeared from the sky above and the earth below. If you peruse the historical literature of the United States, you find stories about a bird that flew in the sky in flocks measuring up to 5 miles long and a mile in width.
