The Passenger Pigeon was once the most common bird in America and quite possibly the world. With flocks numbering in the billions the birds would block out the sky for hours on end. A flock was able to fell trees due to their sheer combined weight. Due to overhunting the bird began to decline in the 1880s. Being highly social and dependent on one another the loss of many pigeons doomed the rest of the species. The decline was worsened by the bird’s low reproductive rate of an egg a year. Three captive flocks were kept by David Whittaker, Charles Whitman and the Cincinnati Zoo. By the year 1909 the flocks had dwindled to three pigeons all housed at the Cincinnati zoo. By 1910, only Martha, a female pigeon, was left. She remained at the zoo, becoming an icon of extinction, until her death in 1914. Incidentally she died in the same cage as Incas, the last Carolina Parakeet.
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