The next meeting of the Northern Virginia Bird Club will be on Wed. April
15. Our speaker will be Dr. David Blockstein for "Lessons from the
Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon a Century Ago". The meeting will be held
at St. Andrew's Epicopal Church, 4000 Lorcom Lane, Arlington 22207 at 8:00.
Directions can be found in the Siskin at www.nvabc.org. Early bird
refreshment start at 7:30. As always any contributions of food or drink
will be most welcome. We will have door prizes, clubs pins for sale and a
book exchange table.
In 1800, billions of Passenger Pigeons crisscrossed the skies of the eastern
United States and Canada. Passing flocks darkened the skies for many hours.
Yet, by 1900 the species was virtually extinct, and on September 1, 1914,
Martha, the last of her species, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. The centenary
of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon provides a teachable moment for
conservationists, scientists, educators, and public to consider how the most
abundant bird in the world went extinct over a matter of decades and to
ponder its implications for today.
David E. Blockstein is the Senior Scientist of the National Council for
Science and the Environment. He is the author of the Birds of North America
species account on the Passenger Pigeon. He is one of the leaders in Project
Passenger Pigeon (www.passengerpigeon.org ), an effort to use the 2014
centenary of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon as a teachable moment to
advance science and conservation. He is the founding chair of the
Ornithological Council and a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union.
Project Passenger Pigeon includes <http://e-int.com/billionstonone/> From
Billions to None - A film about species extinction and habitat ...
Joanna Taylor
Arlington, VA
