Page 11 - St Giles Catesby booklet MC StG 20210723 e-flip_Neat

Passenger pigeon and American turkey oak

Mark Catesby's hand-coloured etching of "The
Pigeon of Passage", as he called this bird, is
possibly his most famous image because, like
the dodo from the Indian Ocean island of
Mauritius, this handsome bird is now extinct.
Catesby's portrait of the passenger pigeon,
shown against a background of oak leaves was
the first ever published. In his day, flocks of
passenger pigeons came south "from the
North" to Virginia and Carolina in "incredible
numbers". Where they roosted, they were so
numerous that they broke the limbs off trees.
The pigeons often had to roost "on one
another's Backs". He saw them fly overhead in
"such continued trains" for three successive
days without a break.
This abundant pigeon was easy prey.
People in New York and Philadelphia would
shoot at them from their houses as they flew
past, and even knock them down from their
roosts with poles. Soon the flocks disappeared;
the passenger pigeon's populations collapsed
and by the late 1800s the bird was essentially
extinct.
Mark Catesby noted that the passenger
pigeon had a patch of feathers just above the
shoulders of its wings that "shines like Gold",
and in at least one copy of The natural history of
Carolina ... he used gold leaf to accentuate Mark Catesby, 1730. The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands, volume 1, plate 23.
those feathers. "Pigeon of Passage" (passenger pigeon) (Ectopictes migratorius)
with American turkey oak (Quercus laevis)