A message from Martha by Mark Avery - review

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; Guardian bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/paperback; Amazon US hardcover/kindle US]. 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 captivebred 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.

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Mark Avery is a freelance author and independent environmental expert specialising in nature conservation. A scientist by training and a naturalist by inclination, he studied Biological Sciences at Oxford and Conservation at UCL. Dr Avery worked at the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for 25 years and was RSPB’s Conservation Director for 12 of those years before he went freelance. He grew up in Bristol, attended Bristol Grammar School when his love for birds was first awakened, and where he was a member of the Young Ornithologists’ Club. He resides with his family in rural Northamptonshire, UK. He can be found on twitter @MarkAvery.

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You may wish to read about a recently published study that further explores the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

You may also wish to watch several videos that discuss Martha’s last homes.

What was it like to experience a flock of billions of passenger pigeons flying overhead and darkening the sky? Check out my piece, Before there were none.

Read my review of Joel Greenberg’s book about the history of the passenger pigeon, A feathered river across the sky.

Read my review of Errol Fuller’s book about the passenger pigeon in art and photography.

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When she’s not got her nose in a book, GrrlScientist can also be found here: Maniraptora. She’s very active on twitter @GrrlScientist and lurks on social media: facebook,G+, LinkedIn, vProud and Pinterest.