the tides are extraordinary. 23-foot swings in the tides. it has to be right in order to allow paratroopers to be able to see sufficiently and the pilots who were hauling them. the winds have to be right, whether has to write. the weather was wrong as it turned out. as in our never had good luck with this weather. its survey for the invasion of morocco and the invasion of sicily and was tormey in the comment. unusually in june 5th, 1944. he can usually count on benign weather in the coast of france. it was awful so he posed on it for a day. he had a narrow window in which the tides in a minute and all the rest would still obtain in a way that was suitable for this kind of invasion. if he had delayed much longer, the next appropriate. it's going to be several weeks later. there is extraordinary anxiety

that the germans i find out if it had even 24 hours of warning that this invasion force is coming to normandy rather than some other point on the french coast. it could've been, probably would've been. to the anxiety level is unbelievable when isenhour has to postpone it, makes the decision to postpone it. so june 6th is the day we celebrate as d-day. >> number of troops, number of deaths? >> well, there are five divisions ago when over the beaches basically. two american in three british and canadian. and then there are three airborne divisions. altogether you talk about a couple hundred thousand troops going in on june 6. most of the deaths -- the worst beach was omaha, where one of the two american beaches. there were several thousand deaths there. there had been concerned that the number of deaths could run in the tens of thousands and

this did not happen. by no means were the casualties light, but they were less than anticipated at utah beach, which was the furthest right invasion. the british and the canadians had a tough time of it, the ibm of june 6, they're a canadian troops as far as six months in length. there is quite a disparity between the resistance that these allied leaders found and their ability to push inland and that is the trick in innovation. you want to get in as far as you can come as quickly as you can, five-mile s'more you want to push the enemy's artillery so they can't show the beach. that is when you are most vulnerable coming across the beach and a omaha beach it took several days to get to that point. but nevertheless, it turns out to be quite successful in the casualties while talking 3000 or

so deaths altogether, they are lighter than many had feared. [inaudible conversations] >> or final author presentation of the days sure greenberg. he begins out live on booktv in the 30th annual printers row lit fest. [inaudible conversations]

>> okay, everyone. good afternoon. hope everyone has had a good day at the greg lit fest today. very special occasion. a quick moment to thank all of her sponsors who made this event possible. the author spoke, a feather river across the sky is on sale now in the main lobby and book signing will take place immediately after the program. today's program is broadcast live on c-span 2's booktv. if there is time at the end for q&a, we ask you guys used a microphone located in the stairwell. that we the viewers can hear your question as well as the authoring moderator. if you would like to watch this program again, please let our coverage will re-air this evening at 11:00 p.m. central time. please keep the spirit of the

sudden i'm going all you apply with a subscription to produce her journal at the premiere book section, fiction series of membership program. we are producing a digital book store or out. take one of our promo cards for information about the happen next special book deals. before i begin this program come i would ask if you could turn off your cell phones or at least put them on that note. we encourage you to take pictures, but please turn your flashes off. you can post your pictures on twitter, and scram our facebook, using the hash tag printers row. without further ado, it is my pleasure to turn it over to "chicago tribune" barry allen. -- [applause] ..

>> i want to start, joel, by asking you about the bird itself,q because pigeon. some of us havexd a negative association with thee1 wordt( "pigeon." and so i want toçó ask you, whaá exactly is or wasi] a passenger pigeon? >> well, itt(t( started out passenger pigeon is not a messenger pigeon, it's not açóik carrier pigeon. those aret( euphemisms for theqq

eurasiant( pigeon. 300 species, so i like to illustrate this by referring to a familyjf of mammals. the cats,i] the felines. to say that all pimg johns are alike is to say that the tabby curledxd on yourq sofa is the se as a tiger, as a lion.ñndc+kdtq. so the passenger pigeon was endemic to the eastern part of the united statesq an% canada. it looked a lot like a mourning dove. i call it a mourning dove onw3r lp y colored. even though it looked like a mourning dove,çó more recent research shows it'sfá more closy world pigeons, one of whichñr is the band be tail that's found o. the pacific coast. but the passenger pigeon was, in my view, unlike anyw3 other bird

three principal reasons. first, it had a huge population. probably in the billions,4÷ but undoubtedly the most common bird in this continent and perhaps the world.qfá second, that population was not evenly distributed across the landscape, and it was not cryptic. mice,ñi white-footed mice are a( adapt, but you don't -- abundant, but you don't see 'em. john audubon saiow3 a flight tk three days to pass. ñ literally for the duration of that period. and he said the droppingsxd feeo like snowflakes. the third is that despite thatxr abundance, as late as 1860 there was an account of birds nearñr torontoko that probably exceedr tw yillion birds.

from the wild.xd and on september 1, 1914, the last of the species died.ó[ >> and that was axd devastating scene, which we'll get to in a little while.my but i want to talk a little bit more about what these aggregations looked and soundedd like, because we have never seen it.xd in our lifetime. but it sounds like it was an incredibleñit( event in much ofs country, andxd people would comd out and gaze at thise1 in amazement. and i don'tok know, maybe sometimes in fear, ii=$p(uup&ly have 4 impression. >> absolutely, sure. >> tell usçó a little bit about what this looked like. >> so one example is something that happened inñi kilometerçó n columbus, ohio, in the spring of 1854. people were running errands, doing their work, and they began to hear aq hum. sky,q and they saw wispyq cloud.

over time the clouds became closer, and they realized they were passengerok pigeons. a little bit later the birds plunged intoñi darkness. people who havejf never seen the phenomenonq bet( before thoughti dropped to their knees in prayer. xdq >> the most powerful forces in ñit( so ite1 was -- and3 american culture in thet(t( 19th century. if you saw something like that, you're not apt to forget it. ñr writers, manyi] of them incorporated thisjf intó their work.

>> in fact, it led to the development of anea underground

seed disdisperser. >> so where were they going, these huge clouds? where were they going and what for? >> so passenger pigeons moved across the landscape primarily in search really of food. i mean, they moved generally north in the spring and south in the fall, but not under the strict patterns of, say, warblers. i don't know how many of you are birders and have an interest, you know, going north in the spring. these birds were known, there were large numbers one year around christmas at the southern shores of james bay in canada, and one year they nested in mississippi. so these large flocks were largely attracted by concentrations of food, particularly acorns and beechnuts. >> so how did they spread the word amongst themselves like,

hey, we all -- several millions of us -- are going thataway where we hear there's good food. >> we don't know that with certainty, but when the birds would migrate, they formed broad fronts. so there were, you know, thousands of birds, and so they were able to survey the landscape as they were going. and if they knew, for example, that last year a certain place had lots of acorns, which oaks do not produce a surfeit of nuts every year, they probably would have avoided that. so they were able to see. they had some memory. and if a flock of birds were seeing all these other birds going in one direction, it was probably a good idea to go with them. so, you know, a combination of those cues probably enabled them to find where the abundance of

forage was. >> and so they formed these huge clouds when they flew, but they also formed these enormous cities where they landed to either roost or hang out, breed, i guess. can you tell me a little bit about what that looked like, their roosting areas? >> sure. now, passenger pigeons nested in, by pairs, by tens, by hundreds. so any configuration occurred. but they are best known for these giant, what, aggregations as you describe. so in central wisconsin in 1871 near the dells, the largest nesting ever recorded spread across 850 square miles and probably involved 136 million birds.

these are, as i said, they're a little bit bigger than a mourning doves, but enough of them would land in a tree where branches, big old branches of big oaks would break. trees toppled at times, and so often, again, the description of a forest after the birds had been there was likened to the aftermath of a tornado. roosting areas also, though, the nesting areas, i mean, obviously, they're laying eggs, the birds, and they're raising their young, so the birds had to be present for about maybe five weeks or so whereas, you know, roosts they wouldn't have to stay as long. >> so these numbers and these sizes of flocks and roosting areas sound like the last thing that we can imagine would go extinct, the very last. so what happened to the

passenger pigeon? >> well, as my friend david said, we happened to the passenger pigeon. they became a commodity. the attraction was they were cheap. they could be sold for pennies apiece. sometimes they were fed to livestock, and there was even one instance in northern michigan, pataski, where they were nesting, they were used to fill potholes in the road. so what with the railroad and the telegraph, the expansion of those technologies, the railroad meant that you could ship birds where wherever you could get them to a station, and the telegraph meant their location could be monitored. and that also allowed the development of a class of hunter, probably anywhere from 600 to 2500, who did nothing but

chase the birds all year round. they shot them, they used nets, they asphyxiated them, sometimes they burned them. i say in the book few things sparked the human imagination more than figuring out how to kill. and in this case, you know, they used a whole plethora of techniques. and so that constant erosion. so when the birds were -- think about what a bird has to do to survive. so two adults have to breed, produce fertile eggs, the eggs have to hatch, the chicks have to fledge -- that is, be able to fly -- and start the process over again. but with the pigeons when people, as they tried to nest, people went into the colonies firing their guns, and the birds often just abandoned the nests, or they were killed. the squabs, the baby pigeons,

were highly desired, and they were targeted. and they were shot throughout the year. so just erosion through all phases of their lives resulted this their extinction. in their extinction. >> what was their value? i take it the using in the roads was an exception to the rule. what was so, what were people doing with them when they sold them and bought them? what were they doing with this major amount of pimg johns? >> they ate them. so as the american, you know, urban areas were burgeoning in the middle to late 1800s, you know, these birds, as i said like with the railroad, they could be shipped to st. louis, chicago, markets in boston, new york, philadelphia, toronto. so, you know, there you are some poor person, you could buy them. now, they also appeared on menus of some of the great feasts of the 19th century. so the wealthy ate them, the poor ate them. sometimes they were so common

people just, you know, got tired of 'em. some of the, there's accounts of servants demanding that their employers not make them eat passenger pigeon more than, like, three times a week because if they were in the area, you know, they would be breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it'd be easy to get tired of 'em. >> they sound like a really impractical source of food because they're so small, and they're covered with feathers. i mean, surely you had to work really hard. >> well, i mean, again, think of the size of a mourning dove. you'd have to eat quite a few of 'em, but if they were a penny or two apiece, you know, you could do that. and back in the day too people were used to having, you know, food wasn't packaged in little plastic containers, you know? they were hanging from the market stalls with the full

feather/skin/fur that the animals had. so, i mean, clearly things were different in how you received your food. >> i see. so the other thing you write about is there were the pragmatic things about the marketplace, that they were sold. but it also sounded like, like hunting pigeons became kind of a frenzy, that a frenzy took hold in a city. people would stop working, people would -- kids would leaf school. it -- would leave school. it became a thing to do. can you talk a little bit about that? >> yeah. it became a real problem in urban areas when the birds would come over. you know, people would be firing so much that the pellets would rain down on children and pets, and back in the old days guns had watting. you'd in-- wadding. you'd insert it into the barrel. that would become hot, and when it was discharged, fires would actually break out. so cities like quebec city, st.

louis, minneapolis, they banned all shooting of the birds. but it was described as, hunting pigeons was beyond human restraint. i mean, when they came, you grabbed your gun, and you went shooting. >> and it doesn't sound like it was difficult. i mean, you have written -- you basically pointed your gun up and shot, you know? it didn't take much skill. >> well, somebody actually gave, described -- gave you instructions on how to shoot pigeons when they were roosting or nesting. you'd go into the colony, you'd take your gun, you'd point the muzzle up. not down, up. squeeze the trigger, and pigeons would rain down upon you. and when they were in these big flocks, you didn't have to be a very good shot to, you know, bring down something, you know, that was a mile long or something. so, yeah, absolutely. >> and tell us a little bit about some of these other

equally nonsporting-sounding ways that people hunted them. in particular, the use of a stool pigeon. >> yeah. so the backbone of the passenger pigeon industry was netting. i mean, guns are expensive, you have to buy ammunition powder. so what they would do is they would clear an area, put grain, and they would attract the wild birds by using stool pill johns which were -- pigeons which were live passenger pigeon decoys. and so they would put these on like a teetertotter. the hunters were in the blind, and by moving up and down they would create the impression of a peacefully feeding bird. the birds flying over would look down and see it so then -- oh, in order to insure that the

stool pigeon didn't panic, they sewed its eyelids shut frequently. and so when the pigeons landed, they could catch hundreds at a time, 1200 at a time. problem was if so many landed, they could actually raise the net, and they could escape. so the hunters would bolt out of their blinds, throw themselves on the net to weigh it down, and with one free hand reach in, grab out, grab the bird and chomp down on the back of its neck. one hunter claimed he was chewing so many pigeons, his teeth got loose. and i asked the dentist about it, and he said given the prevalence of gum disease back then, he thought that was plausible. so that was the principal way really even more than shooting. >> so there was killing of pigeons going on on a very massive scale. did anyone worry about this? did anyone start to say, hey,

you know, we're killing too many of these? very few, and it certainly wasn't organized. the most extravagant attempt to protest the killing was an effort by junius prove discuss booth in 1830. booth was a great actor of his day, more famously the father of john wilkes but unlike his son, junius really had a deep aversion to killing. so he reached -- he was performing in louisville, and there'd been a big flight of birds, and they were being sold on every corner. so he reached out to a well known minister, james freeman clark, who was one of the leaders of the unitarian movement -- people still know his name -- to do a funeral, a protest. and, you know, clark thought about it, said, nah, i think i'll pass. but booth did rent a hearse and

bury the pigeons. what happened, i mean, as time went on, you know, by the 1880s it was clear that the birds were decreasing. and what's interesting and kind of scary is the industry was making up facts, encouraging people, discouraging people from worrying about the birds. so the passenger pigeon laid one egg a year. so people in the, there was a guy named martin, actually, from chicago that said, oh, don't worry, they nest four or five times a year, you know? there's still plenty of them. and, in fact, he wrote an article when the birds finally diddies appear, he said -- did disappear, he said, yale, i'll acknowledge -- yeah, i'll acknowledge the birds diddies appear, and i don't have any clue why. so this denial, a common human propensity when dealing with inconvenient truths to deny it.

and, you know, that's, i would argue we see that today in certain areas. so. >> so as they started to decline, were there any protections in the law, or is this, it was just a legal free-for-all? now there are all sorts of laws that protect birds. was there any legal protection for these birds? >> well, actually, the very first law that pertained to passenger pigeons was passed by massachusetts, and it was designed to protect netters from shooters. i mean, pity the poor netter who patiently waited, some guy with a gun would be shooting, and he'd scare off the birds. but eventually, there were some laws. and, in fact, by the 18 50z there were some laws to protect songbirds, okay? they're pretty, and they eat insects. but passenger pigeons kind of fell through the cracks. and in ohio in 1857, they

created a committee of the state senate to look into the issue of passenger pigeons. and they said passenger pigeons were so abundant their numbers could never decrease. three years ago the ohio historical society list that as -- listed that as one of the ten most embarrassing moments in ohio history along with the oning of the cuyahoga -- the burning of the cuyahoga river. so, you know, people started thinking about it. the only state that totally banned passenger pigeon hunting of any kind was michigan. that's the good news. bad news? it happened in 1897 when there were hardly any left. so law came too late. but the loss of the bird, the decimation of bison, the fight over the use of heron featherrers for -- fepters for hat decorations helped spawn the first environmental movement. and out of that movement came

the lacey act which makes it illegal to engage in the interstate commerce of illegally-obtained birds. and more importantly, the migratory bird treaty act. so these laws still today are the principle bulwark, legal bulwark by which we manage our birds. so the loss of the birdied, you know bird did, you know, lead to the protections we have. >> and another use for people capturing pimg johns, they were the pigeons used in trap shooting, right? it was actual pigeons? >> back in the day, you know, if you went out, the the pigeons would be made out of flesh and blood. so live pigeons were caught. some of them were kept. and chicago was a real center for this. they would be fed grain. so, you know, they would be fatter and tastier than wild-caught birds. some number of those birds were also used in trap tournaments.

and some of the bigger ones, there was one in long island, one venue. 30 or 40,000 passenger pigeons could be shot over the course of a three or four-day process. and when you think about how many birds died in the process of shipping them from oklahoma, new york or chicago, mortality was high. it wasn't as great as, you know, the food issue, but it certainly contributed, it was a major, a major type of mortality. >> so as these numbers are going down, the birds start to become rarer in the wild. when was the last sighting of a passenger pigeon in the wild? >> that's kind of tricky because they look so much like mourning doves. you really have to rely on a specimen. so doer roosevelt said -- theodore roosevelt said he saw

some this 1906, but the last bird in my research i found a couple, the last wild bird for which there is a spes many was shot in illinois near springfield in 1901. it's now in the collection of milliken university in decatur. the last wild bird shot was a year later in indiana. so by 1902, 1903 the birds were gone from the wild. and that's significant because there were three captive flocks, one in milwaukee, one in chicago, one in cincinnati. a bird probably born in chicago in the backyard of professor charles otis whitman of the university of chicago was sent to cincinnati. it was a female. she lived there with other pigeons. eventually, as time went on, they all died until there were just two. there was martha and george, the zoo channeling the washington family in their naming of pigeons. and in july of 1911, george died

which left martha the last of her species. and, you know, time passed, she became weak. they lowered her perch to a few inches above floor of the cage. but she was an attraction because people knew she was the last passenger pigeon, and stories have it that on weekends people would crowd around her cage and threw sand at her to get her to move. so they cordoned off her cage. and finally about 1:00 in the afternoon on september 1st, 1914, she was found dead. she was put in a block of ice and sent to the smithsonian in d.c. where she's been ever since. and what's interesting is martha -- the only migrating she ever did was by train. whitman taught in chicago but was the director of the woods hall lab in massachusetts, so every year she went to massachusetts and back. the only flying she ever did was

on a first class flight to san diego and then later to the cincinnati. so to have a bird, i think, really adds poignancy to the story. >> it does. it's such a sad scene. i just -- and also to know the exact date that a species went extinction is -- extinct is remarkable. >> it's rare. yeah. >> remarkable. >> the last wild bird, i mean, if martha had died seven to eight years earlier, you couldn't be as sure. but because there were no really credible sightings anywhere, you know, near that time, it's a very high probability that she was, indeed, the last. and so, you know, this is the hundredth anniversary, and that's what spawned a lot of the activity. >> did people feel bad? did anyone say look what we did, or has it taken decades or a

hundred years, i guess, until people started to say that. >> no. when they were cuts appearing -- disappearing, a few people started. in 1892 there were people in wisconsin who sent a petition to the governor that he had the national -- have the national guard protect this nesting. but it was mostly after the birds were gone. since you and i spoke last, i was talking -- been giving talks everywhere, it seems, and i was at the detroit lakes burning festival in western minnesota. a gentleman came to me, and he was 90 years old, and he said when he was 16 in 1940, he met a guy who was 80 years old who used to trap passenger pigeons as a youth. and as he grew older, you know, the realization that he collaborated in the extermination of this bird

really caused this guy to be sad. so to be, you know, one degree of separation from somebody that actually knee live birds -- knew live birds, that was quite moving and touching to me. >> that is remarkable. well, so if this bird is at the smithsonian and there are other specimens of this bird, you have one and there are others, would it be possible to, like, take its dna and somehow in the future recreate it? or is this science fiction? >> well, i mean, certainly some smart geneticists think that it's worth trying. there are more passenger pigeons in museums than that of any other extinct bird. there's 1500-2000 of them. so what they're planning on doing is taking dna from, well, from passenger pigeons and putting it into a band-tailed pigeon, one of the closest living relatives. whether, you know, they're going

to create -- they'll create something that looks somewhat like a passenger pigeon, you know? what point does it become one? and even if they succeeded in creating this mostly passenger pigeon, they're never going to recreate the hundreds of millions of them. and another thing is that more mourning doves are shot than any other game bird in the country. so if you want to create a flock of 30 of these, let's say, you'd have to really watch 'em and make sure they don't go very far, because if they were to fly to a place and a time where people were shooting mourning doves, they would surely shoot these. new york times had an article which some of you may have seen, it was a sunday magazine, and they interviewed ben novack, the young man who's working on this, and he thought it would be 25 years before they would get a

bird. and, of course, you know, to create a flock would be well beyond that. so somewhere in the future there might be something passenger pigeon-like, and i don't think it's really the same, but it's a powerful story. i mean, it's a powerful idea of trying to bring these things back. >> although i guess it asks the question, at what point are you messing with nature. i mean, humans are a part of nature. we're a predator, we destroyed it. maybe that's just a natural cycle, and we're messing with it if we attempt to bring it back and undo what we did. almost a philosophical thing. >> yeah. i mean, stan temple who was at university of wisconsin for many years said if extinction is no longer forever, a lot changes. and i think one danger and, i mean, i think we may all have heard this, people are talking about pollution and all the

other degradation we're heaping upon this planet. well, we can always build a space station, you know? i mean, obviously, not a real solution. so if it makes us less careful, we can just correct any mistake, that would be unfortunate. so i think really time will tell as to how successful this effort is. and they're working with mammoths, they're working with tasmanian wolves and other species that have gone extinct or nearly extinct. >> what do you see as the importance for people to know this story? you started something called project passenger pigeon which maybe you can talk a little bit about, but why -- it's a very dramatic story, but in addition to the narrative drama of it, why is it important for us to know this? >> well, one way that i put it is it's a cautionary tale. what it tells us is that no matter how abundant something

is, and it doesn't have to be a bird, it could be water, it could with -- could be fuel. if any of you were here at the previous talk, there was a discussion of the aquifer underneath the great plains. all of these things, i mean, there's seven billion of us on the planet now. so if we're not careful, if we don't proceed with circumspection, no matter how abundant something is, it could be lost. and if you think in terms of biodiversity which i, for one, and i think many, it certainly contributes to the richness and beauty of the planet. something like the passenger pigeon with that abundance can disappear in decades, you know, something rare can go like that. >> yeah. what -- you're a birder s and you've written about the natural history of chicago. if i might ask for your tips on where you like to go, speaking of not extinct birds but very much alive birds, where do you like to go birding in the

chicago area? >> oh, maybe a couple of places. one, i love to see migration. because when you're watching migration, you're not just seeing birds, as wonderful as they are, but you're seeing these messages encoded in their dna. you're seeing birds moving. and a place that's really splendid to watch that is at miller, indiana. lake michigan is the only great lake on a north/south axis. a bird flying south on lake michigan literally runs out of water in gary. and i've seen birds flying south, and it's almost like they suddenly realized, oh, no more water -- there's no more water, what do we do? so it's a funnel, and if the weather's right, you can see lots of birds. illinois beach state bark in zion, illinois, south of the wisconsin line is quite lovely as well. >> and you knew about the passenger pigeon pretty young,

because you were a birder, right? i mean, isn't this story known among birders? >> well, it is. and beyond that, because, i mean, i actually grew up in scoping key and went to college hill junior high, and there's this wonderful book by t. gilbert pearson called "birds of america," and i took it out three or four times in a row until mrs. kelly, the librarian, said, you know, there are other books out there. so in that there's a story, i mean, there's an account of the pill john. and, you know -- pigeon. and, you know, it's funny, if i had the resources, i would have done a poll. most people probably don't know that story of the passenger pigeon. you know, a fair number of people do. some, if you live in wisconsin or michigan, you're more apt to than if you lived probably in chicago. but it appears in popular culture. the very first star trek episode made reference to passenger pigeons, because they went to a

planet devoid of life, and somebody made a reference to the passenger pigeon. >> to it being extinct? >> exactly. >> really? >> it's out there in popular culture here and there. since 2010 there have been four books written about the passenger pigeon, one of whom by amy timberlake, and amy was here today at the festival. it was given a high award by the newberry for young adult readers and also won an edgar for mystery for juvenile readers. so, you know, it's still a story that holds power to authors. >> clearly. clearly. well, we have time for a few questions, so i'd like to ask anyone who has a question about the passenger pigeon or probably birding in the chicago area or anywhere since joel has traveled

extensively to step to a microphone and ask a question if you'd like. otherwise i'll keep peppering him. >> while you're up there, i would like to invite if anyone -- the world premiere of our documentary on passenger pigeons from billions to none: the passenger pigeon's flight to extinction, is this tuesday night, june 10th at the peggy nodebart nature museum. the reception's at 5:30, the film is being screened at 7, it's about 56 minutes long. we're hopeful it'll be aired on public television. but if you live on the north side or can travel there, there'll be live music. i would encourage, you're all invited. there's no charge, so hope to see you then. >> yeah. i have a couple questions. when i think of those or try to visualize those darkened skies, it kind of reminds me of the

almost extinction of the buffalo which sometimes covered the plains so much that it took days for a single herd to go by, but they say, they were eventually saved from extinction. are there similarities between that, or are there other species of not just bird species, avian species, but other mammals that have a similar sort of pattern of ex2006? because -- extinction? >> sure, great question. so, yeah, i mean, the bison were this abundant mammal. there was an interest in saving them before they died out. they were easy to breed. so they were saved. i would say, too, that, you know, in 1860 if you wanted to see those herds of bison, you'd have to schlepp out to colorado or western kansas. the pigeon darkened the skies over the major cities of the united states and canada. so, you know, it was a lot closer. as terms of other animals, i

think the closest analog that is currently happening is to languagic fishing. they're removing all life from the ocean from the surface to the bottom, all life that's bigger than the meshes of the net. and with sonar they can identify where the sharks and where the tuna are. the same -- passenger pigeons arguably went extinct because the federal government had not assumed jurisdiction over migrating animals. and it took a nation, it took a sovereign. so the open seas, the only way you can regulate fishing is through cooperation because no one country can dictate what, say, chinese fishing vessels can do. so unless there's cooperation, you know, tuna and shark are probably on their way out. and with sharks, they're killing

them for their dorsal fin. so you have a 400 pound animal maybe, you're throwing away hundreds of pounds of meat pause it's not worth keeping it -- because it's not worth keeping it onboard because of the high price some people will pay for the dorsal fin. >> was there something ecologically out of balance in terms of their not having predators that made them so abundant, and that abundance eventually led to their extinction? because, you know, because of all the factors that you talked about? but, and sort of a related question, if there had not been that amount of killing, would they still be able to thrive today, because would they have enough to eat, you know? would their migrations, you know, would they be able to pass

over all the parking lots and shopping malls? >> so the first part, um, i don't think there was anything out of balance. i mean, the fact that the forests of the eastern united states and canada were rich enough to support that amount of life, you know? there was balance. if there hadn't been the food to support them, the flocks would not have been that size. and when you think about a bird like a passenger pigeon, years would go by before they would return to a site depending on the availability, say, of acorns or beech. so the point is the only predators that could really go after them had wigs. so those were -- had wings. so those were a couple kinds of falcons and two bird-eating hawks. now in a given spot where they were nesting, you know, rah coons and cougars could get 'em, but those cougars couldn't travel hundreds of miles. it took modern homo sapiens with

modern technology to wipe them out. so it wasn't anything, you know, i mean, the birds were perfectly adapted to their environment, and it was only because of a voracious, highly technical society that did them in. now, if -- i agree. i mean, at the time they disappeared, the best evidence in my view is there was plenty of food for them. there were fewer places for them to nest that facilitated the hunting. it made it easier for people to find them. but if the birds had maintained their numbers, you know, for another several decades, then they probably would have had trouble, you know, surviving at those numbers. in my mind, there's still an open question as to whether they needed huge numbers.

a bird, one of the last wild birds was shot in 1900 called buttons, because the taxidermist ran out of glass eyes and used buttons to fill the hole in its head. it was born in the spring of 1899 when there were, you know, the pair that raised it was probably alone. so in my, you know, i don't think we -- there's a lot we don't know about the bird because they were never studied in life. i mean, you know, the techniques weren't there, the interest wasn't there, the resources weren't there. so there are things about the bird -- we don't know the ecological implications of its presence and its absence. i mean, there's some fascinating conjecture, but we don't know with certainty. be. >> did awed bob paint the -- audubon paint the passenger pigeon? >> he surely did, and his picture, his painting is surely the most iconic, although it's wrong in certain technical details, but it is one of the,

it's a lovely, lovely picture. i mean, audubon said they laid two eggs, and they only laid one. i mean, he, he had some things wrong about the bird. he also didn't think they would ever become extinct as long as the forest -- he thought it was a habitat issue. but again, he thought they laid two eggs and that they nested multiple times a year. >> well, he had a lot of company in never thinking they'd become extinct. so -- >> absolutely. >> are there any other questions? yeah. >> there any other birds that, like, flew in these giant clouds like the passenger pigeon? >> good question, and there are. some of you, i mean, something that comes to mind not nearly in the numbers are those starling

access rations that you see -- access rations that you see on youtube that are just these clouds in all sorts of shapes moving across the sky. the most abundant bird in the world today, and i never quite get the name right, maybe somebody knows it, it's a small finch in africa, and there are tens of millions. they're being killed as well. i ask birders and ornithologists, you know, what's the largest number of birds you've ever seen? i think for me i saw 250,000 snow geese in nebraska once. and that's a lot of birds but just a fraction, you know, of what it was. blackbirds roost by the millions. and so there certainly are, you know, birds that still flock in large numbers, but, you know, just, again, a fraction of what the big flights of pigeons represented. >> okay.

well, thank you very much. again, joel greenberg, author of "a feathered river across the sky: the passenger pigeon's flight to extinction." thank you very much. thanks for coming. [applause] >> thank you, everyone. hope you guys had a great day today at the printers row lit fest 30th anniversary. pretty spectacular. thank you very much, ms. brotman, for moderating this conversation. thank you, mr. greenberg. again, his book, "a feathered river across the sky," on sale in the lobby, and he'll be signing at the table right outside this auditorium. thanks, everyone. have a great afternoon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> that concludes our

this is the official letter informing him that he won the pulitzer prize. it's dated may 1, 1972. very brief for such an honor. in accordance with this action today by columbia university

press agent i enclosed a check for $1000. congratulations to as we move further away from that period of wall is being acted as a writer, i think he's probably less red, less well understood as a force on and about the west. in a lot of ways i think he is still a very viable and articulate interpreter of the west, even though the west has changed a lot since his passing. but i think there's a lot to be taken from his writings that educate you on the west in who we are and what we are in the west. >> to find out more about booktv's recent visit to salt