Found in Translation: Avian lesson not just for the birds

Martha died completely alone.

No other passenger pigeons were left in the sky on Sept. 1, 1914, when a keeper at the Cincinnati Zoo lifted her body from the ground.

It was hard to believe.

Once counted in the billions by ornithologist Alexander Wilson in 1810, wild flocks plummeted to a few dozen before the 1890s. Closely resembling the mourning dove, but half as large, passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) covered most of eastern Canada as well as the Northeastern and Midwestern skies of the United States.

“The light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse,” early 1800s pioneer and bird artist John James Audubon reported after witnessing a flock flying from Henderson to Louisville, Ky.