The United States is hardly deficient in natural wonders without equal in the world: the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the California redwoods, the Everglades, and Yellowstone, to name only a few. But there is at least one incomparable American natural wonder that we have, alas, lost forever: the passenger pigeon.
To be sure, the individual birds, although handsome, were not particularly remarkable. They were about the size of a city pigeon, but with the long tail of a mourning dove instead of a fantail. The males sported a rosy red breast, fading to pink on the belly.
What made the passenger pigeon a wonder of the world was its incredible abundance and its habit of gathering in immense flocks when flying to its nesting areas. In 1831, John James Audubon, in his Ornithological Biography, remembered a flock he had seen in 1813 on his way from Hardinsburg, Kentucky, to Louisville:
The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose. . . . I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of the flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the center. In these