I have been about Lake Superior since 1863. Have never known any
rookery near the lake or in Lake Superior Basin, although I think they
did breed near Lake Superior, for they were in such great quantities
about the lake during the whole summer. In 1871 when this town (Duluth)
was first building, there were millions of them about here. In the Lake
Superior region there are lots of berries but no beech nuts, except
near Grand Island, 40 miles east of Marquette. It is likely if there
was any roosting on Lake Superior, this would be the most favorable
place.... The pigeon was numerous on Lake Superior in 1872, for I have
recollections of catching some that year while captain of the Steamer
_Japan_. During foggy weather and at night, they would alight on the
boat in great numbers, tired out. On foggy mornings, the blowing of
our whistle would start them up. Often, when they would light on the
eave of our overhanging deck, we could sneak along under the deck and
quickly snatch one. I remember having caught several in that way. As
clearly as I can remember, they left all at once along about 1875.
I have seen a few here along about 1882, and one fall in October, I
think, of 1884, I saw two or three, the last I remember of them.
Kalamazoo, Mich., June 13th, 1905.
Wm. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich.:
* * * * *
It seems too bad that this noble bird should have been blotted out. The
last flock, a small one, that I ever saw was in 1891. I saw pigeons in
1883, 1885 and 1886.
I have been in their nesting grounds. The males and the females sit on
the nest on alternate days. When their big nesting was near South Haven
in this State, the birds used to fly over this town every day in their
quest for food, some of them going fully seventy-five miles in an air
line from their nesting. One day it would be a continuous stream of
male birds and the next day it would be the females.
How the netters did massacre them and ship them away by thousands and
thousands. Many were kept alive and shipped all over the country for
pigeon shoots. The last wild pigeons ever used for this purpose that
I know of was at John Watson's Grand Grossing, Chicago, Illinois, in
1886. I asked Watson, in February last, where he got those birds, and
he said from Indian Territory, so I think the netters finally cleaned
up what was left of the big flight that perished from the sleet and fog
at their last nesting in Michigan, near Petoskey, in 1881.
Their nests were built and eggs laid in late April. A big wind and
storm of sleet came up just at dusk and the birds left; there was a big
fog on Lake Michigan, and the birds were swallowed up by the storm;
anyhow they disappeared then and there. I have heard tell of the beach
being strewn for miles with dead pigeons, and I heard an old woodsman
tell of the stench arising from dead pigeons in the woods.
It was that storm of ice that surely wiped them out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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