Numerous others noted millions of birds that would block out the sun, and each of them would remark that a year or so later, the birds disappeared. Seaver is said to have seen pigeons land on a dead oak, only for the thousands of birds to break the limbs. Cooper recalled flocks of millions of birds, and his father reportedly felled 23 birds in one shot, a hired hand dropping 18. Scribner, rolled across the wheat field like a huge ball, a smooth mass spinning forwards as birds from the rear replaced birds in the front. Scribner and many others, sowing the wheat seed (which boomed in Wisconsin for a time only to lead to catastrophe and eventually dairying) required two men, with one following the planter to cover the seed and save it from pigeons. Crump remembered the birds “forming a cloud before the sun.” To Mr. Yet, without fail, each early settler seems to have spoken at length about the passenger pigeon if they themselves did not see the great flocks, they certainly had stories of relatives who had, and these paragraphs stand as the few local memories of a bird now lost. His notes contain a sentence or two on each duck, hunting methods and stories for each mammal, and random musings on identifiable songbirds and their relative abundances. For each interviewee, Hawkins ran through the list of wildlife, from species of ducks to badgers to songbirds. These notes are striking in their treatment of the passenger pigeon. Here at Faville Grove, we are lucky to have historical records and recollections of the passenger pigeon from Art Hawkins' notes from interviews he conducted for “A Wildlife History of Faville Grove,” published in 1940. For those early settlers of Wisconsin who witnessed a Civil War, they not only saw a nation divided, but also a bird that never reclaimed its mythical abundance-a bird they would not forget-the passenger pigeon. Each of these birds went from abundance to scarcity, and back to abundance. For those living through lean sandhill crane decades, their noisy and soulful return to marshlands across Wisconsin this past week is a reminder of the positive implications of conservation. Ask any generation about the wildlife of their time: what sticks out as memorable? For those who lived through the DDT years, the rebound of raptors may be striking-bald eagles went from the brink here in Wisconsin and continent-wide to current breeding status in almost every county in the state.
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