Collecting for the "Long Haul"

by Christian G. Carron, Director of Education, Interpretation, and Research
(originally published in "Discoveries" Magazine, Spring 2009)


Eggs in storage at CARC
Passenger Pigeon

A few years ago I heard a public radio interview from a small Texas museum in which an expert identified one of the museum's artifacts as a passenger pigeon egg.  He went on to say that, if it was verified, it would be added to a list of only 162 documented specimens still in existence.  I listened with amazement, guessing that the Public Museum's two passenger pigeon eggs probably were not on this list and knowing further that we also have two mounted passenger pigeon specimens on exhibit in the Habitats and Z is for Zoology exhibits.

At one point, few would have believed these birds would disappear.  Before Europeans arrived in North America, it is estimated that the passenger pigeon population numbered five billion birds.  During periods of migration, reports describe dense flocks a mile wide flying overhead for five hours.  The flocks were so dense that a single shotgun blast could bring down thirty to forty birds.  But by the nineteenth century, a mass slaughter began as commercial hunters killed and processed the birds for meat.  In 1869, more then seven million were killed for food in Van Buren County, Michigan alone!  By the turn of the century the passenger pigeon was gone from the wild and the last survivor died in captivity in 1914.

One of the strengths of the Public Museum is our "long view of things".  An important part of the Museum's mission is to preserve for the future.  We collect artifacts and specimens in the present, when they're easy to find, that we believe will be important for generation who come after us.  When the Public Museum began in 1854, collecting bird eggs was a popular amateur hobby.  Before this practice was outlawed in 1918, thousands of eggs were collected and donated to the museum, the passenger pigeon eggs in 1926.

Significant changes have occured in the world around us in 154 years, like the extinction of what was once America's most common bird.  Commonplace when collected, these eggs are now rare remnants from our past.  What will the museum collect today that will hold such significance a century from now?  Only time will tell.

- posted by ccarron@grmuseum.org
2/4/2010