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A Message from Martha: The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and Its Relevance Today by Mark Avery
September 1st, 2014 sees the centenary of one of the best-documented extinctions in history—the demise of the Passenger Pigeon. From being the commonest bird on the planet 50 years earlier, the species became extinct when Martha, the last of her kind, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. This book marks the centenary of that tragic event. Built around the framework of a visit to Cincinnati and the pigeon’s former haunts in North America's east coast, by author Mark Avery, it tells the tale of the pigeon, and of Martha, and explores the largely untold story of the ecological annihilation of this part of America in the years between the end of the US Civil War and 1900—an unprecedented loss of natural beauty and richness, as the prairies were ploughed, swiftly to be replaced by a dustbowl, while the population of Bison plummeted from around 30 million to just 1,000, the victim of habitat destruction and indiscriminate slaughter.Written engagingly and with an element of travelog as well as historical detective work, this book is more than another depressing tale of human greed and ecological stupidity. It contains an underlying message—that we need to re-forge our relationship with the natural world on which we depend, and plan a more sustainable future. Otherwise the tipping point will be crossed and more species will go the way of the Passenger Pigeon. We should listen to the message from Martha.
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First published July 17, 2014
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About the author
Mark Avery
17 books13 followersMark Avery is an English scientist and naturalist. He writes about and comments on environmental issues. He worked for the RSPB for 25 years until standing down in April 2011 to go freelance. He was the RSPB’s Conservation Director for nearly 13 years.
Avery lives in rural Northamptonshire and is a member of the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, the BTO and the National Trust for Scotland. He is a trustee of the World Land Trust.
Avery lives in rural Northamptonshire and is a member of the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, the BTO and the National Trust for Scotland. He is a trustee of the World Land Trust.
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November 18, 2014
On 1 September 1914, Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon died in Concinnati Zoo.
In this remarkable book, A Message from Martha, Mark Avery, former conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) explores how the passenger pigeon, once the most numerous bird in the world, was pushed into extinction.
Europeans hunted the passenger pigeon remorselessly, destroyed the forests that it lived in and didn't understand its breeding biology well enough to be able to recognise the signs that the species was in steep decline until it was too late.
Avery travels throughout the former range of the Passenger Pigeon to try to understand more of its biology and to try to imagine what these lands would have looked like if the huge flocks of pigeons were still there, darkening the sky as they flew over and breaking trees with the weight of their breeding colonies. He pieces together what he can of the breeding biology of this bird, giving a picture of a bird so numerous it didn't bother to protect itself from predators (which meant that when it's number declined, predators started having proportionately a much greater effect on the populations) and one that travelled from place to place to take advantage of the year's best food sources rather than being loyal to particular places (meaning that people were much less aware when the species started to decline).
He also outlines key facts from American history (and the life of Martha Grier, a resident of Ohio, who died on the same day as Martha the Passenger Pigeon) so that we can see that the story of this species is just part of the overall story of how 'Progress' was responsible for a diminuition in US wildlife in the time period during which the passenger pigeon plummeted from being hugely numerous to being made extinct.
The later chapters ask what relevance does the extinction of this one species have for us today? Parallels are drawn with the rapidly declining turtle dove in the UK.
The book ends with an imagined message from Martha:
'I forgive you for wiping out my species - you didn't really mean to do it, and maybe you knew no better. .... However...You can now choose ... the level of future ecological devastation, and the excuse of ignorance no longer holds. Whether you do better in the future is a test of your worth as a species. You have the knowledge and ability to live sustainably on this planet but it's a hard road from where you are now. It's no longer a matter of what you know - you know enough. From here on, it's a test of whether you care - do you care enough? Please care. Please do better. Please start now.'
It's a message we need to listen to and act on, now, before it's too late for the wildlife that still remains.
In this remarkable book, A Message from Martha, Mark Avery, former conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) explores how the passenger pigeon, once the most numerous bird in the world, was pushed into extinction.
Europeans hunted the passenger pigeon remorselessly, destroyed the forests that it lived in and didn't understand its breeding biology well enough to be able to recognise the signs that the species was in steep decline until it was too late.
Avery travels throughout the former range of the Passenger Pigeon to try to understand more of its biology and to try to imagine what these lands would have looked like if the huge flocks of pigeons were still there, darkening the sky as they flew over and breaking trees with the weight of their breeding colonies. He pieces together what he can of the breeding biology of this bird, giving a picture of a bird so numerous it didn't bother to protect itself from predators (which meant that when it's number declined, predators started having proportionately a much greater effect on the populations) and one that travelled from place to place to take advantage of the year's best food sources rather than being loyal to particular places (meaning that people were much less aware when the species started to decline).
He also outlines key facts from American history (and the life of Martha Grier, a resident of Ohio, who died on the same day as Martha the Passenger Pigeon) so that we can see that the story of this species is just part of the overall story of how 'Progress' was responsible for a diminuition in US wildlife in the time period during which the passenger pigeon plummeted from being hugely numerous to being made extinct.
The later chapters ask what relevance does the extinction of this one species have for us today? Parallels are drawn with the rapidly declining turtle dove in the UK.
The book ends with an imagined message from Martha:
'I forgive you for wiping out my species - you didn't really mean to do it, and maybe you knew no better. .... However...You can now choose ... the level of future ecological devastation, and the excuse of ignorance no longer holds. Whether you do better in the future is a test of your worth as a species. You have the knowledge and ability to live sustainably on this planet but it's a hard road from where you are now. It's no longer a matter of what you know - you know enough. From here on, it's a test of whether you care - do you care enough? Please care. Please do better. Please start now.'
It's a message we need to listen to and act on, now, before it's too late for the wildlife that still remains.
September 1, 2015
This book is great on facts but way too full of flights of fancy. I understand Avery's reasoning for including the American history chapter, but it's got to go. He is repetitious, but that helps me retain facts and concepts. Instead of this being touted as a history of the passenger pigeon, it should be re-touted as an ecological polemic using the pigeon as an example of the effects of human activity. I most enjoyed his comments as he drove around Martha sites. I have ended up wondering on the effect of extinction of Passenger Pigeons on beech trees, a species that is having big problems here.
September 9, 2016
This is the year of the passenger pigeon. Despite this, you might wonder how three books about the passenger pigeon could possibly have been published this year — and, iconic or not, what more could possibly be said about an extinct species one hundred years on? Yet each book brings something new to the table. But my favourite of this trio passenger pigeon books is Mark Avery’s
A Message from Martha: The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and its Relevance Today
[Bloomsbury Natural History, 2014]. Written by a British scientist and conservationist, this book discusses the passenger pigeon’s life and extinction in roughly three parts: first, the author explores the bird’s life history, second, the author goes on a road trip in America to discover and experience for himself this species’ former haunts, and third, the author identifies the lessons that we have (supposedly) learned from the passenger pigeon’s extinction and applies them to current conservation problems at home in Britain.
The first three chapters of this book carefully piece together the peculiar biology of the passenger pigeon, a bird that was probably the most abundant avian species in the world — so numerous that they outnumbered the entire human population in the United States until sometime between the 1880s and 1890s. In these chapters, which are fascinating reading for any biologist, Dr Avery explores the passenger pigeon’s lifestyle, compares it to other species, poses interesting questions and explains how, despite their tremendous numbers, passenger pigeons’ natural history made them particularly vulnerable to the destructive proclivities of European invaders, as he refers to human settlers throughout the book.
Then Dr Avery sets out on a quirky and often amusing five-week road trip — a quest if you prefer — around the eastern portion of the United States where he visits the precise locations where passenger pigeons were reported more than one hundred years ago. He finds the flight paths followed, their roosts and of course, recorded nesting locations. Although this sounds like a daft idea, it’s appealing. It instills a sense of propinquity, of place. And it works. Along the way, Dr Avery shows that the extinction of the passenger pigeon was just one of many casualties resulting from a suite of social and economic changes occurring in the United States at the time; geographic and population growth, wars, the abolition of slavery and the wanton destruction of natural resources on a massive scale. Altogether, it’s an interesting and expansive look at the history of the region, the first history of the US that I’ve read that bothers to include ecology.
The author then considers the three most widely accepted hypotheses for the decline of the passenger pigeon; how this bird went from billions, to millions, to thousands, to none. Dr Avery easily refutes the idea that they died en masse from disease — partly because no one ever noticed any such die-offs at the time — although he notes that disease can’t be ruled out as a minor contributing factor. On the other hand, he dismisses the hypothesis that Chestnut Blight, a fungal disease that killed off one of the passenger pigeon’s main food sources, the American chestnut, because it didn’t appear on the eastern seaboard of the United States until 1904. At this time, the only remaining passenger pigeons were captive-bred birds living at the Cincinnati Zoo. Which leaves just the third hypothesis, overexploitation, as being the primary driver of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Here, Dr Avery identifies habitat destruction as the primary cause for this species’ extinction. Basically, European invaders destroyed the vast hardwood forests that the pigeon depended upon. At the same time, overhunting was a major contributing factor. During this time, the massive slaughter of passenger pigeons for food, for feathers, and especially as a pernicious form of entertainment, was compounded by extensive unrestricted commercial hunting for distant markets.
As Dr Avery notes in his book, the loss of the passenger pigeon was unique:
Which brings me to Dr Avery’s fundamental question: what can we learn from the tragic — and uniquely public — extinction of the passenger pigeon? Can we focus our new-found knowledge (and harness our collective regret at this loss) for good? After Dr Avery returns home after his road trip, he is haunted by the passenger pigeon but his attention turns towards another troubled species, towards a potential extinction at home; the turtle-dove in Great Britain. As Dr Avery reports, this wide-ranging species has experienced a stunning decline of 81 percent since 1970. (The RSPB’s devoted site, Operation Turtle Dove, reports a more dire situation, stating that “they have suffered a 95% UK population decline since 1970 and a 74% decline across Europe since 1980.”) Although dramatic and deeply worrying, the turtle-dove’s decline is not unique in the UK; RSPB surveys have found that 14 of 19 farmland bird species have been declining during some or all of the past 40 years.
Aaand this brings me to the most important question of all: why care? Why should we care that the passenger pigeon is extinct? And why should we care if the turtle-dove — or any other animal or plant — goes extinct? Dozens of reasons and hundreds of arguments have been made for preserving wild places and wildlife, but in this, my favourite passage from the book, Dr Avery shares his eloquent, thoughtful and quietly personal response;
This absorbing book is an engaging and wistful, yet measured, chronicle about the tragic loss of one very special, iconic, species, the passenger pigeon. Part natural history, part travelogue, and part conservation, the author plays the role of scientist-sleuth as he meticulously analyses the available data and captures every last molecule of information about this bird and its life for us, and places this material into its larger social, economic and historic context. In spite of the seemingly gloomy topic, this book is full of hope that we all can heed the message from the last of the passenger pigeons, Martha, and make a difference in this world by choosing to protect and preserve the wild spaces and the wild things that share their planet with us.
NOTE: Originally published at The Guardian on 28 October 2014.
The first three chapters of this book carefully piece together the peculiar biology of the passenger pigeon, a bird that was probably the most abundant avian species in the world — so numerous that they outnumbered the entire human population in the United States until sometime between the 1880s and 1890s. In these chapters, which are fascinating reading for any biologist, Dr Avery explores the passenger pigeon’s lifestyle, compares it to other species, poses interesting questions and explains how, despite their tremendous numbers, passenger pigeons’ natural history made them particularly vulnerable to the destructive proclivities of European invaders, as he refers to human settlers throughout the book.
Then Dr Avery sets out on a quirky and often amusing five-week road trip — a quest if you prefer — around the eastern portion of the United States where he visits the precise locations where passenger pigeons were reported more than one hundred years ago. He finds the flight paths followed, their roosts and of course, recorded nesting locations. Although this sounds like a daft idea, it’s appealing. It instills a sense of propinquity, of place. And it works. Along the way, Dr Avery shows that the extinction of the passenger pigeon was just one of many casualties resulting from a suite of social and economic changes occurring in the United States at the time; geographic and population growth, wars, the abolition of slavery and the wanton destruction of natural resources on a massive scale. Altogether, it’s an interesting and expansive look at the history of the region, the first history of the US that I’ve read that bothers to include ecology.
The author then considers the three most widely accepted hypotheses for the decline of the passenger pigeon; how this bird went from billions, to millions, to thousands, to none. Dr Avery easily refutes the idea that they died en masse from disease — partly because no one ever noticed any such die-offs at the time — although he notes that disease can’t be ruled out as a minor contributing factor. On the other hand, he dismisses the hypothesis that Chestnut Blight, a fungal disease that killed off one of the passenger pigeon’s main food sources, the American chestnut, because it didn’t appear on the eastern seaboard of the United States until 1904. At this time, the only remaining passenger pigeons were captive-bred birds living at the Cincinnati Zoo. Which leaves just the third hypothesis, overexploitation, as being the primary driver of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Here, Dr Avery identifies habitat destruction as the primary cause for this species’ extinction. Basically, European invaders destroyed the vast hardwood forests that the pigeon depended upon. At the same time, overhunting was a major contributing factor. During this time, the massive slaughter of passenger pigeons for food, for feathers, and especially as a pernicious form of entertainment, was compounded by extensive unrestricted commercial hunting for distant markets.
As Dr Avery notes in his book, the loss of the passenger pigeon was unique:
Of … 130 extinct birds, most (85%) have lived (and died) on oceanic islands, and only around 19 have been continental species. The usual CV for an extinct bird includes terms such as ‘flightless’, ‘island-dwelling’ and ‘range restricted’ — none of which applies to the Passenger Pigeon [sic]. And the loss of the Passenger Pigeon [sic] from the Earth removed more individual birds than did all the other 129 extinctions put together. By any measure, this was an exceptional extinction. [p. 168]
Which brings me to Dr Avery’s fundamental question: what can we learn from the tragic — and uniquely public — extinction of the passenger pigeon? Can we focus our new-found knowledge (and harness our collective regret at this loss) for good? After Dr Avery returns home after his road trip, he is haunted by the passenger pigeon but his attention turns towards another troubled species, towards a potential extinction at home; the turtle-dove in Great Britain. As Dr Avery reports, this wide-ranging species has experienced a stunning decline of 81 percent since 1970. (The RSPB’s devoted site, Operation Turtle Dove, reports a more dire situation, stating that “they have suffered a 95% UK population decline since 1970 and a 74% decline across Europe since 1980.”) Although dramatic and deeply worrying, the turtle-dove’s decline is not unique in the UK; RSPB surveys have found that 14 of 19 farmland bird species have been declining during some or all of the past 40 years.
Aaand this brings me to the most important question of all: why care? Why should we care that the passenger pigeon is extinct? And why should we care if the turtle-dove — or any other animal or plant — goes extinct? Dozens of reasons and hundreds of arguments have been made for preserving wild places and wildlife, but in this, my favourite passage from the book, Dr Avery shares his eloquent, thoughtful and quietly personal response;
As we lose nature from the world around us it is like removing pieces of music from our lives. When a species declines then the volume of that piece is turned down and the sound is distorted. When extinction happens the music is silenced forever. I want nature in my life like I want music in my life. I don’t expect to come up with an economic justification for the presence of music, and nor do I for nature. When we lost the Passenger Pigeon, a signature species, we lost a major symphony. I am tempted to say Beethoven’s Seventh, but given the number of voices we lost with the Passenger Pigeon it might have been the Ninth. [p. 236]
This absorbing book is an engaging and wistful, yet measured, chronicle about the tragic loss of one very special, iconic, species, the passenger pigeon. Part natural history, part travelogue, and part conservation, the author plays the role of scientist-sleuth as he meticulously analyses the available data and captures every last molecule of information about this bird and its life for us, and places this material into its larger social, economic and historic context. In spite of the seemingly gloomy topic, this book is full of hope that we all can heed the message from the last of the passenger pigeons, Martha, and make a difference in this world by choosing to protect and preserve the wild spaces and the wild things that share their planet with us.
NOTE: Originally published at The Guardian on 28 October 2014.
June 3, 2015
Read this book for my Nature Lit group, and I found it pretty engaging. A lot of what I thought I knew about the Passenger Pigeon's demise was overturned. After reading this book I came to the opinion that these birds would have a lot of trouble surviving in today's world because of their biology. I don't suggest it was okay that they went extinct; I just question whether they could live in the 21st century since they were communal roosters and they needed unbelievable numbers to survive, and they followed tree mast, and these nut producing forests are gone - at least in the huge tracts that the Passenger Pigeon would need. The author is British, and his writing style is quite folksy and amusing when he is showing sections of his diary when he traveled throughout the U.S. when he traced the route of places relevant to the Passenger Pigeon. He pegged people and activities in small town America right on. It's one thing when an insider writes about small town American life, but seem through the eyes of a Brit was quite fun, and I really enjoyed reading his vignettes of his travels. I also learned about some of the threatened birds in the UK such as the many farm region birds like the Turtle Dove. The book is such a fun mixture of science, natural history, history, and diary entries, it kept me engaged from beginning to end. And, it made me think about extinction and particularly humankind's role in habitat loss for so many species.
July 25, 2014
Excellent, thought provoking and, in several places, quite moving reading.
March 24, 2020
This book took a long time to read due to being diverted by doomsurfing the Covid19 pandemic, yet I could not persuade myself to move over to more usual stress times fodder such as crime, and felt it a highly relevant read.
I feel I've got my ear in now to Mary Avery's writing voice (well, I can now hear him and his North Somerset/Bristolian accent - he has good ideals and ideas) For me he fills a unique niche between the strictly ornithological and the more purple end of the spectrum of nature writing. He's both scrupulous and speculative. I very much enjoyed this wide ranging story of the extinction of the passenger pigeon and this book is not much polemic - the Message from Martha is really "Think about what happened to me"
He creates a vivid picture of the time of the passenger pigeon and indeed some general abundance as a theme in North American fauna, and takes the reader carefully through the bird's life history and what may have happened to the species. There's an engaging travelogue through significant places in the US. There's a history timeline where he has found a woman who died on the same day as Martha and weaves their histories together with US and world history and I loved it - as he says, natural history too often doesn't get a look in on these.
He has his flights of fancy as in Inglorious which don't really work for me - his imagined future speech by Barack Obama. It's the style of presentation of the ideas rather than the ideas. I was also left with a few questions whose answers were either not there or I missed - was there an effort to save the captive pigeons and get them to breed which limped along and failed, or was it really as it sometimes sounds, as though there was a fatalistic attitude to the extinction.
I kept thinking I was nearly at the end and I wasn't, yet it didn't seem too long. There was a lovely pace and direction to his subsequent thoughts and travels in the UK, looking at some related issues in the turtle dove, the general decline in farmland birds, what the really significant pressures on species might be, and quite gently really but seriously suggests what might be done. There is so much goodwill towards people too - those who see him as fitting some stereotype kneejerk animal rights activist and agriculture and shooting hater have not bothered to read what he actually says.
The acknowledgements are lovely, especially the bit about the ice cream. This is a very human book which nature needs us to read and reflect on.
I feel I've got my ear in now to Mary Avery's writing voice (well, I can now hear him and his North Somerset/Bristolian accent - he has good ideals and ideas) For me he fills a unique niche between the strictly ornithological and the more purple end of the spectrum of nature writing. He's both scrupulous and speculative. I very much enjoyed this wide ranging story of the extinction of the passenger pigeon and this book is not much polemic - the Message from Martha is really "Think about what happened to me"
He creates a vivid picture of the time of the passenger pigeon and indeed some general abundance as a theme in North American fauna, and takes the reader carefully through the bird's life history and what may have happened to the species. There's an engaging travelogue through significant places in the US. There's a history timeline where he has found a woman who died on the same day as Martha and weaves their histories together with US and world history and I loved it - as he says, natural history too often doesn't get a look in on these.
He has his flights of fancy as in Inglorious which don't really work for me - his imagined future speech by Barack Obama. It's the style of presentation of the ideas rather than the ideas. I was also left with a few questions whose answers were either not there or I missed - was there an effort to save the captive pigeons and get them to breed which limped along and failed, or was it really as it sometimes sounds, as though there was a fatalistic attitude to the extinction.
I kept thinking I was nearly at the end and I wasn't, yet it didn't seem too long. There was a lovely pace and direction to his subsequent thoughts and travels in the UK, looking at some related issues in the turtle dove, the general decline in farmland birds, what the really significant pressures on species might be, and quite gently really but seriously suggests what might be done. There is so much goodwill towards people too - those who see him as fitting some stereotype kneejerk animal rights activist and agriculture and shooting hater have not bothered to read what he actually says.
The acknowledgements are lovely, especially the bit about the ice cream. This is a very human book which nature needs us to read and reflect on.
January 13, 2024
September 1, 2024, will mark 110 years since the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon.
On that date in 1914, Martha died some time between noon and 1 PM; born, lived, and died, in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. The last known wild passenger pigeon, Buttons, also a female, died on March 24, 1900, shot by 14 year-old Press Clay Southworth in Ohio, on his family farm.
No one living today has ever seen a passenger pigeon. Yet in our great (or great-great) grandparents lifetimes the passenger pigeon was the most numerous bird that has ever graced our planet. Five to 10 billion strong, living only in the great American Eastern deciduous forests east of the Mississippi. The beautiful males had grey-blue backs with a bright orange throats, chests, and eyes with legs and feet of coral and white underparts. Our great forests of oaks, American beech and American chestnut produced mast (seed) in the autumn upon which the pigeons feasted in the spring at their colonial nesting grounds.
Our ancestors saw the great flocks of pigeons described by Peter Kalm " incredible multitude ... their number ... extended 3-4 English miles in length ... and more than one such mile in breadth ...and flew so closely together, that the sky and the sun were obscured by them".
British conservationist Mark Avery poignantly, with kindness and humor, and with his biologist's eye, tells the passenger pigeon's cautionary tale in this imminently readable book.
No surprise ending here - we extincted them, every last bloody one.
So.
The least we might do is to remember them.
And per Avery as Martha might say "Please care. Please do better. Please start now."
On that date in 1914, Martha died some time between noon and 1 PM; born, lived, and died, in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. The last known wild passenger pigeon, Buttons, also a female, died on March 24, 1900, shot by 14 year-old Press Clay Southworth in Ohio, on his family farm.
No one living today has ever seen a passenger pigeon. Yet in our great (or great-great) grandparents lifetimes the passenger pigeon was the most numerous bird that has ever graced our planet. Five to 10 billion strong, living only in the great American Eastern deciduous forests east of the Mississippi. The beautiful males had grey-blue backs with a bright orange throats, chests, and eyes with legs and feet of coral and white underparts. Our great forests of oaks, American beech and American chestnut produced mast (seed) in the autumn upon which the pigeons feasted in the spring at their colonial nesting grounds.
Our ancestors saw the great flocks of pigeons described by Peter Kalm " incredible multitude ... their number ... extended 3-4 English miles in length ... and more than one such mile in breadth ...and flew so closely together, that the sky and the sun were obscured by them".
British conservationist Mark Avery poignantly, with kindness and humor, and with his biologist's eye, tells the passenger pigeon's cautionary tale in this imminently readable book.
No surprise ending here - we extincted them, every last bloody one.
So.
The least we might do is to remember them.
And per Avery as Martha might say "Please care. Please do better. Please start now."
March 30, 2023
This having been the second book I've read about passenger pigeons, I was glad to find innumerable differences from the first. One being that, if I remember correctly, the first book was all facts, while the author of A Message from Martha includes the author's opinion, a description of some of the work he did to prepare for writing the book (including a 5-week trip to the United States), and other details to really personalize the book.
This book is chock full of passenger pigeon facts, but also facts about other bird species, including both extinct birds and birds still alive today. Many of the facts and details found in this book cannot be found in the other book I read, and vice versa, ensuring it was certainly worthwhile to read both.
It's a shame this book hasn't gotten more recognition, but I do believe that to be because the passenger pigeon itself doesn't seem to get much recognition these days. The author of this book himself illustrates this point beautifully in the book when he talks to people in the US about passenger pigeons and a few of them said something like "Oh, we get them in the backyard sometimes."
This book is excellent. If you have an interest in passenger pigeons or extinct species in general, A Message from Martha is a must-read. We can't change the past, but we can change the future. We can prevent what happened to the passenger pigeon from happening to other species going forward. Reading this book is a great step in that direction.
This book is chock full of passenger pigeon facts, but also facts about other bird species, including both extinct birds and birds still alive today. Many of the facts and details found in this book cannot be found in the other book I read, and vice versa, ensuring it was certainly worthwhile to read both.
It's a shame this book hasn't gotten more recognition, but I do believe that to be because the passenger pigeon itself doesn't seem to get much recognition these days. The author of this book himself illustrates this point beautifully in the book when he talks to people in the US about passenger pigeons and a few of them said something like "Oh, we get them in the backyard sometimes."
This book is excellent. If you have an interest in passenger pigeons or extinct species in general, A Message from Martha is a must-read. We can't change the past, but we can change the future. We can prevent what happened to the passenger pigeon from happening to other species going forward. Reading this book is a great step in that direction.
December 6, 2021
This was a pretty stupid book. Large portions of the text had little to nothing relating to the topic at hand. The chapter of disparate historical anecdotes from the United States’ history was lacking in anything worthwhile. The tracking of the life of a woman named Martha, who happened to die in the same year as the last passenger pigeon, also named Martha, was an exercise in misunderstanding probability. There were random commentaries on the differences between British and U.S. cultures. The contents range so freely and are so personally emotive of the author that they read like a diary. And, in fact, the author wrote most of it in dated journal format. The topics of species extinction and other environmental dilemmas in the modern world are essential to address. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t do that. And in the end, the “message” from Martha was insipid.
March 8, 2017
Early chapters on PP ecology etc brilliant, but kind of list it's way with the history of America and chapter about a random woman named Martha. Ended with a bit of a rant about British farmers. Lack of cohesion and rhythm to the second half of the book.
December 31, 2018
Finally got through this book! It's a bit dry and had a difficult time keeping my attention but it has a great message.
April 8, 2022
Very interesting read going into the history and biology of the world’s once most populous bird - now extinct.
August 14, 2014
This is a great book - the remarkable story of the Passenger Pigeon; a bird that, over the space of a few decades, went from being the most numerous bird in the world to total extinction. Martha, the last of her species, died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
The accounts of the unimaginably massive flocks of these birds, billions strong, flying overhead for hours at a time or roosting over hundreds of square miles and bringing down trees with their combined weight, are truly amazing. But what this book does really well is recount the speed with which the United States was colonised by European settlers - the rapid spread of "progress" West across the wilderness, especially once the railways started, was the death knell for these birds. I had not appreciated before now just how quickly the whole of what is now the USA was overtaken by pioneers and settlers - a brilliant achievement in economic, engineering and social terms for the new American population (though not so much for the Native American people), but disastrous for much of the once abundant native flora and fauna. The Passenger Pigeon was one of those species that was lost almost before people realised that it might be in trouble, and before there was any chance of being able to save it.
The book is full of fascinating facts, jaw-dropping statistics, and true stories - some will break your heart, but others will warm it too. Mark Avery writes with real affection for the United States landscapes, people, and wildlife, and his background gives the ecological message of the book a proper scientific grounding with fair and balanced insight into what happened to the Passenger Pigeon and what may happen to other species in danger from habitat loss and persecution.
This is a book with a message - and the message from Martha is an important one that we all need to heed and learn from.
Highly recommended reading for all.
The accounts of the unimaginably massive flocks of these birds, billions strong, flying overhead for hours at a time or roosting over hundreds of square miles and bringing down trees with their combined weight, are truly amazing. But what this book does really well is recount the speed with which the United States was colonised by European settlers - the rapid spread of "progress" West across the wilderness, especially once the railways started, was the death knell for these birds. I had not appreciated before now just how quickly the whole of what is now the USA was overtaken by pioneers and settlers - a brilliant achievement in economic, engineering and social terms for the new American population (though not so much for the Native American people), but disastrous for much of the once abundant native flora and fauna. The Passenger Pigeon was one of those species that was lost almost before people realised that it might be in trouble, and before there was any chance of being able to save it.
The book is full of fascinating facts, jaw-dropping statistics, and true stories - some will break your heart, but others will warm it too. Mark Avery writes with real affection for the United States landscapes, people, and wildlife, and his background gives the ecological message of the book a proper scientific grounding with fair and balanced insight into what happened to the Passenger Pigeon and what may happen to other species in danger from habitat loss and persecution.
This is a book with a message - and the message from Martha is an important one that we all need to heed and learn from.
Highly recommended reading for all.
September 1, 2014
The Passenger Pigeon was once the most numerous bird on the planet, probably by a huge margin. The statistics that Mark Avery recounts on population size, breeding colonies, roosts and migrating flocks are simply mind-boggling, completely dwarfing anything we can see today. There were almost certainly somewhere between five and ten billion Passenger Pigeons in North America early in the nineteenth century.
Mark Avery provides a very useful digest of the vast literature on this species and comments on various aspects of Passenger Pigeon ecology, its dependence on native broadland forest and its mast production and statistics on population dynamics. He discusses habitat loss and the unbelievable slaughter of the birds (for food) in the 2nd half of the 19th century.
The story is a tragic one and well told, the story of a man-made extinction. Martha was the last surviving Passenger Pigeon and died 100 years ago in captivity, in Cincinatti zoo. Martha's message to us, so well reinforced by Avery, is that we should do our utmost to make sure that such an event cannot happen again.
Essential reading for anyone concerned with conservation, habitat change, loss of important food plants, modern farming methods and indiscriminate shooting. It is easy to say that the Turtle Dove will not become the new Passenger Pigeon - but can we be sure?
Mark Avery provides a very useful digest of the vast literature on this species and comments on various aspects of Passenger Pigeon ecology, its dependence on native broadland forest and its mast production and statistics on population dynamics. He discusses habitat loss and the unbelievable slaughter of the birds (for food) in the 2nd half of the 19th century.
The story is a tragic one and well told, the story of a man-made extinction. Martha was the last surviving Passenger Pigeon and died 100 years ago in captivity, in Cincinatti zoo. Martha's message to us, so well reinforced by Avery, is that we should do our utmost to make sure that such an event cannot happen again.
Essential reading for anyone concerned with conservation, habitat change, loss of important food plants, modern farming methods and indiscriminate shooting. It is easy to say that the Turtle Dove will not become the new Passenger Pigeon - but can we be sure?
November 27, 2016
A perceptive, comprehensive account of the demise of the Passenger Pigeon tied to the history of the conservation movement in the U.S. Avery takes an extended tour of the U.S. to revisit former haunts of the Passenger Pigeon. He is a keen observer of birds, natural history and human culture -- stopping to chat with everyone from birders to hot dog stand vendors. His travelogue makes for very good reading.
Although he wanders off into too much analysis, conjecture and open-ended questions at times, his book rights itself at the end with inspiring prose about pursuing the elusive (for humans) culture of conservation. As Avery says in his final message from Martha: "It's no longer a matter of what you know - you know enough. From here on, it's a test of whether you care -- do you care enough? Please care. Please do better. Please start now."
Although he wanders off into too much analysis, conjecture and open-ended questions at times, his book rights itself at the end with inspiring prose about pursuing the elusive (for humans) culture of conservation. As Avery says in his final message from Martha: "It's no longer a matter of what you know - you know enough. From here on, it's a test of whether you care -- do you care enough? Please care. Please do better. Please start now."
September 10, 2015
This book really didn't add up to a complete book. Chapter 5 was all that should have been written - the rest of the chapters felt like filler. Especially the one about the "other" human Martha - that seemed really pointless. Same for the road trip chapter. The author makes a good point about human-caused extinctions and the fact that now we should know better. But, this should have been a couple of magazine articles.
November 28, 2014
I wish it had included more about the pigeon and its biology than some of the filler-like material about breakfasts in America and an imagined, ideal speech Obama could give on conservation. Still, the message has a certain impact and you may find yourself paying more attention to the birdsong around you.
January 22, 2016
Worth reading if your of a natural history disposition and particularly if once ago you read Silent Spring or The Social Contract by Robert Ardrey. It's not an illuminating read the conclusions are obvious but its the last chapters on what's happening now and maybe a rally to unite to try to fight the inevitable is what this book may be best at
December 20, 2019
A Message from Martha looks at the extinct passenger pigeon and what we can learn from its demise. I enjoyed learning more about the species, as well as the wider ecology connected to it, not to mention thinking about what lessons we should have learned from its extinction.
March 8, 2016
A bit depressing, but hugely instructive about loss of wildlife in the US and elsewhere.
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