Image of Passenger Pigeon via WikiMedia River of feathers Crossing the sky May not see it ever again Beating wings Whoosh up high May not hear that ever again A winding brown-blue cloud of Passenger Pigeons covered the sky, wings whirring in a roaring river of sound. Less than 50 years later, the last passenger pigeon fell to the ground, heart still, from her perch four inches above the ground. In the 1800s, 40% of all North American birds were Passenger Pigeons. Passenger Pigeons, or simply Wild Pigeons, were the most plentiful bird in North America by far, and were easy to shoot. Their squabs, or fledglings, were served in pigeon pies. Most people thought these social birds were protected by their numbers, until the last pigeon, Martha. Martha was bred and raised in captivity by Charles Whitman, a zoologist. He had a collection of various species of pigeons and doves that were initially kept for studying their behavior. Martha was named after George Washington’s wife, Martha Washington. One of the males Martha was kept with was named George. Whitman partnered with the Cincinnati Zoo, recognizing the Passenger Pigeon numbers were on a sharp decline. Whitman’s collection of Passenger Pigeons were the only known surviving pigeons. Martha and the males she was kept with were sent to the zoo. In 1907, Martha and the two males were the only surviving Passenger Pigeons. Attempts to breed Martha were unsuccessful, and both males died in the following years. Martha was the only Passenger Pigeon, an endling. The zoo frantically tried to find mates for her, offering $1,000 to anyone who could capture a live male pigeon. No one ever found Martha a mate, and Martha got older each year. Visitors crowded around her pen, eager to get a glimpse of the last Passenger Pigeon, who was often perched on a branch in her enclosure. What were the visitor’s thoughts when, not long before, farmers would draw their guns at the sight of thousands of birds descending upon their crops, devouring all the grain in a matter of hours? In 1911, Martha suffered an apoplectic stroke, and she was severely weakened. In the following months, worried zookeepers had to lower her perch for her to be able to flap up to it. In the end, Martha’s perch was barely above the ground. On September 1, 1914, at 1pm, Martha breathed her last, and fell lifelessly onto the cage floor. The Passenger Pigeon was extinct. Martha lived an astounding 29 years; most pigeons in captivity live up to 17 years. As soon as the zookeepers found her dead on the cage floor, she was brought to the Cincinnati Ice Company and packed into a 300 pound block of ice. She was sent by an express train to the Smithsonian, and arrived there three days after her death. Martha was molting when she died so she was missing some of her long tail coverts. William Palmer skinned the pigeon and Nelson Wood mounted her skin. Four years after Martha’s death, in her previously vacant cage, was the last Carolina Parakeet, Incus. Incus died in the same cage as Martha. In observance of the Passenger Pigeon’s day of extinction, September 1, 2014, Martha’s mount was brought out on public display at the museum. There are many questions to be asked about Martha and the Passenger Pigeons in general. Why didn’t Martha breed? Were the captive pigeons somehow negatively affected by not seeing many other pigeons? Why didn’t the pigeons survive in smaller flocks? First, the nature of Passenger Pigeons should be discussed. They lived in huge flocks, up to half a billion strong. John James Audubon, a nationally renowned Ornithologist, describes the flock as, “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.” Ironically, there is a saying that “The ornithologist’s greatest tool is a gun.” Audubon shot and killed all the birds he painted, including Passenger Pigeons. Passenger Pigeons bred near the Great lakes. The male had a pale blue head, nape and wings. Its chest and was peach, and it had an iridescent bronze patch on the sides of its neck. Its secondaries, or innermost flight feathers, were dotted with black and its primaries, or outermost flight feathers were dark gray. It had dark gray tail coverts, or top-of-the-tail, and a white undertail feathers. The female was a brownish shade, but overall the color patterns were similar to the male. Passenger Pigeons fed on fruits and insects and could fly up to 62 miles per hour. At the population’s peak there were about five billion pigeons, more than humans at that time. Since so many were shot, about 50,000 birds each day, and their habitat was being destroyed, evolution couldn’t keep up with the pigeon’s ever-shrinking population. Eventually, when there were only small flocks left, this hyper-social bird did not know what to do. Before they were all killed, they were used to being protected by numbers and since the population had been sectioned into small flocks, other predators like Peregrine Falcons could pick the birds off easily. So, is this why no small flocks remained? We can’t know for sure, but it is the most probable answer. Why didn’t Martha breed? In the wild, there were many male Passenger Pigeons to one female. A plausible answer is that Martha had a mutation that prevented her from breeding. It could also be that captive pigeons were somehow affected by not seeing many other pigeons, making them behave unlike wild pigeons. But the most likely answer lies in…flamingos. Flamingos’ mating drive does not trigger if the flock is too small. No one knows why this happens, but it could be to prevent inbreeding. This might have been the case with Passenger Pigeons. Martha was in a group of only three pigeons, but in the wild, each flock is over a million strong. Like flamingos, this
Young Bloggers
Amplifying Voices with Another Kind of Girl Collective
By Sabrina Guo, 13 As the world grows more connected – through displaced populations, the internet, and accessible travel – we need to find ways of adapting positively and supportively to these new circumstances. Laura Doggett and her organization, Another Kind of Girl Collective, which promotes the films and photography of Syrian refugee girls living in Jordan, are wonderful examples of this. While speaking to Laura on Skype and email over several months, I was struck by her devotion to helping these young women tell their unique stories to the rest of the world. I also spoke to two girls in the camps, Khaldiya Jibawi and Marah Al Hassan, over Skype with the help of Tasneem Toghoj, the co-facilitator of the collective, who also acted as our translator. I was struck by their bravery and determination to make something out of their circumstances and lives. Through speaking with them, I began to see the importance of storytelling as a way of connecting and forming bonds with others, something that is especially important and relevant in today’s world. I wanted to reflect this in my own work, so I decided to write this piece to show an example of people from different cultures coming together to talk, bond, and work together. ********************************************************************************* Amplifying Voices with Another Kind of Girl Collective The film shows a crowd of corrugated metal buildings. Between them, children play. Scrap metal and pieces of wood are scattered on the ground, along with hammers, saws, rope. When the sun sets, the sky turns a deep pink and orange, and the buildings are illuminated, flashing red and burnt sienna. At a distance, there is a young girl, maybe four or five years old, wearing a dress decorated with a fabric daisy. She has on one purple shoe and one black sandal. Next to her, older children are playing around; with linked hands, they have formed a circle. The little girl is upset because she isn’t being included. She throws her hands in the air, but when a boy gestures her to join, she runs away, angry. Next, the film shows a boy is using a long length of rope as a whip to thrash a puddle of muddy water. The camera transitions to another little boy who is hammering a metal stake into the hard ground with a saw next to him. There is no soundtrack or dialogue, just the sound of the children’s voices from afar. The sun hangs low in the sky. This film, Children, was made by Marah Al Hassan, a young Syrian refugee who lives in Za’atari, the largest refugee camp in Jordan, which is twelve miles over the Syrian border and home to 80,000 people. Marah came to film by way of the Another Kind of Girl Collective (AKOGC), an organization that holds photography and film workshops across Jordan for Syrian refugee girls. The aim of AKOGC and of its founder, Laura Doggett, is to give the girls the needed space, training, and equipment to develop this art form, along with providing a platform for them to share their own stories and experiences. Through their films and photographs, the girls prove themselves to not be passive and tragic beings, which is sometimes how the media portrays them, but hardworking, creative, smart, and motivated visionaries. According to a 2016 United Nations report, at least 5 million people have had to leave their homes in Syria and settle, at least temporarily, elsewhere in other countries, from Turkey to Sweden. Laura Doggett first started working with Syrian refugees and founded the Another Kind of Girl Collective in Za’atari in 2014. Although thousands of journalists have interviewed refugees in the camp, the stories have often given incomplete or inaccurate portrayals of life in the camps. Laura recognized the need to provide girls in the camps with the necessary equipment and encouragement to document the true stories of their lives, along with a way to connect with others, both in and out of their community. Laura states that her ultimate goal for the collective is to help get the girls started by giving them a direction so they can “use the medium and to learn how to use visual language to be able to express what’s inside of them. A lot of people in general, especially in more traumatic situations, don’t have the words to talk about what’s going on for them. Giving them a visual tool encourages them to learn how to use that tool to say different things about their lives and to reflect on their own stories in a way that they probably hadn’t before.” Laura credits her father, a master storyteller, with helping her find her love of stories. As she grew up, she also read and drew inspiration from authors like Eudora Welty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American short story writer and novelist. She recognized the importance of observation and of storytelling and earned her BA in English and Creative Writing. After college, Laura directed a program called the Appalachian Media Institute in Kentucky, teaching young adults how to make documentaries about their communities. She taught photography and creative writing at High Rocks, an organization in West Virginia that promotes girls’ leadership, confidence, and artistic expression. She has also helped teenagers in the inner cities of NYC and DC to share their worlds through making their own documentaries about their lives. Later, she received her MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University to better learn how to collaborate with young people and reflect their artistic voices and vision more accurately. These days, Laura spends much of her time in Jordan in Za’atari, holding workshops and providing guidance to the young women there. When I asked her how she first connected with the girls in the workshops, since they were from such seemingly different worlds, she said, “We must understand they’re like teenage girls from everywhere else, and so we talk about love, friends, or parents. That’s why they want to be recognized
Forts of Play
Forts, to me, are a great place to hide away! I like to build forts because they are my little place where nobody can bother me. Forts make me feel independent; and away from all noise. I’ve been building forts all my childhood, and I still do. I build my forts almost always in corners because every corner in my house has a chair, a soft thing or a window for light. One kind of fort I make is the bedsheet-supported-by-pillow fort. Other times, I find spaces and just build on them. Like the time I found a bush with an entrance and a great climbing spot. I added a trapdoor (using a branch that can bend and won’t crack with weight on it), and a place to store plants (example, reeds). This spot is one of my favorites to still visit, behind a tree in the frontyard of my home. Inside the home, at my pillows-and-sheets-fort, I often make a little burrow with tunnels, and passages to small blanket-pillow rooms. I have turned even my bottom bunkbed into a fort of many rooms– a mansion palace! Once built, I love to read in my fort. Some forts I’ve built have even had enough space to run around! I sometimes have a nice nap in my fort. All I can say is I’m really happy in a fort. I wish I could be there all day.
