Jim Bradshaw: Passenger pigeons once filled south Louisiana skies

January 1940 was the coldest month of record in south Louisiana, but there were some pretty chilly precedents.
The winter of 1822-1823 was remarkable to one planter not only for its frigid weather but also for an incredible flight of pigeons.
David Rees, whose farm was on the east bank of Bayou Teche near Breaux Bridge, recorded this in his journal on Feb. 7, 1823:
“It appears to me that the … cold in the present winter has been greater than in any winter since I have been in this country. …
"The first week in December was probably the coldest weather ever experienced in this country at that early season of the winter and the effect on vegetation of every kind as extraordinary.
"In Opelousas and many places in Attakapas every thing in the gardens was entirely destroyed.
"In our garden, turnips of all kinds ... were destroyed, the cabbages though injured were eatable throughout the winter and lasted until very laterly, onions almost destroyed, carrots and leeks suffered less. …
"Now, while I am writing this, the weather is remarkably cold for the season, a high north wind prevails, attended from time to time with bursts of rain.”
Freezing weather to the north of Louisiana may have been responsible for driving flocks of the now extinct passenger pigeon to warmer climes.
“This winter has likewise been remarkable for immense flights of pigeons, the like of which has not been seen in the country since the year in which Pensacola was taken by the Spaniards from the British which was in 1781, a year remarkable for cold,” Rees wrote.
Jan. 9, 1823, “was particularly distinguished for the flight of pigeons over this neighborhood,” he said.
“At Pierre Broussard’s they divided; a part flying up the bayou and crossing to the point at Mr. Guidry’s.
"The greater part however seemed to descend the bayou the whole breadth of the woods and a considerable distance to the prairie was for several hours literally covered with them, flying with great rapidity.
“I did not believe the continent contained so many. It seemed to me that a thousand millions would not be too high an estimate for their number.”
If the birds were indeed passenger pigeons, the continent did include that many birds.
They lived in enormous migratory flocks until the early 1900s, when hunting and habitat destruction led to their demise.
A flock seen in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being a mile wide and 300 miles long.
Flying at 60 mph, it took 14 hours for the flock to pass overhead.
They were plentiful enough in St. Martin Parish that Pigeon Bay and Pigeon Bayou were said to be named for them.
Passenger pigeons lived mostly in wooded areas east of the Rocky Mountains, primarily from central Canada to the northeastern United States, but they did fly south regularly, going as far as Mexico during very cold winters.
At one time they were the most plentiful bird on the North American continent.
Their numbers began to fall as deforestation for new settlements robbed them of habitat in the early 1800s, and they took a bigger hit when commercial hunters began slaughtering to sell as a cheap food in the middle 1800s.
They were all but done for by the beginning of the 1900s. On Nov. 28, 1896, the Tabasco heir and naturalist Edmund Avery McIllheny was hunting mourning doves in Bienville Parish when a larger bird in their midst drew his attention. He identified it as a passenger pigeon, in what turned out to be the last documented sighting of one of the birds in Louisiana.
Martha, the world’s last passenger pigeon, died on Sept. 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.