The Passenger Pigeon: Avian Ghost of 1914

Martha, in the Smithsonian Collection
Image © Smithsonian

Hello dear readers,

I'd like to bring you today the first installment of a mini blog series about carrier pigeons and their work in the Great War. My interest was inspired this summer by the sight of Cher Ami(e), the brave little carrier pigeon, whose steely determination and intelligence saved many human lives.

Though she did not have a direct connection to the Great War, another female pigeon has been generating a lot of buzz and a kind of collective indirect nostalgia recently--this is Martha, the last passenger pigeon known to humankind. While British Great War history is our usual province here at Ghosts of 1914, today we cross the Atlantic back to the United States for a brief glimpse of this enigmatic bird's story.

Though there is at least one claimed modern sighting to be found online, for the rest of us an encounter with a live passenger pigeon is something only to be imagined. At one time, clouds of these birds roved American skies. The beautiful painting below, by Michigan artist Lewis Cross, gives us an idea of  what was once an unremarkable sight: 

Lewis Cross,  Passenger Pigeon landscape. © Lakeshore Museum Center, Michigan. 

Image from mlive.com 

Cross captures the sense of infinite plenty, the sky-darkening profusion, that might have led people to believe that there could be no end to the passenger pigeon. The swirl of birds in the painting could be taken for a kind of cornucopia, with its wrapping horn-like form. It is a kind of infinity symbol, arcing this way and that across the horizon. There is a dark presentiment, though, in the tapering trail of birds heading into the distance at the right. The pigeons swoop around and into this dwindling formation; Cross, who painted this piece years after Martha's passing in 1914, in this way shows us the past and present, the broad swath of birds stretching overhead and the tiny trace towards which they move.

Audubon sketch of a passenger pigeon, 1809.
© Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library/Library of Congress 

The passenger pigeon's extinction centenary is a strange anniversary of sorts. It is a moment to mourn the solitary bird, Martha, whose rusty breast, soft brownish grey wings, and striking red-rounded eyes are quite haunting. What a burden to be the last of her kind! It is also a moment when those who never could have seen a live passenger pigeon are made wistful and sad at the thought that any species so visibly available at one moment could vanish in virtually the next. There are even proponents of bringing the passenger pigeon back, using modern DNA research and other technologies to resurrect a species that we identify today with still-shocking invisibility.

There is so much good content available online about the passenger pigeon. I'll close this prologue to our eventual foray into carrier pigeon history with some links for the curious.

Till next time,
Fiona

© Fiona Robinson

More about the Passenger Pigeon:

The New Yorker: "A Century of Extinction"

University of Michigan LSA: "100 Years Without the Passenger Pigeon"

The Guardian (review): "The Passenger Pigeon by Errol Fuller"

The Muskegon Chronicle: Brush with the Past: Eccentric Artist Preserved Now-Extinct Pigeons on Canvas

Smithsonian: Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon

Smithsonian: 360 degree view of Martha

Audubon Magazine: 13 Memories of Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon

4 August 1914/2014: England and Germany at War

"England and Germany at War", Birmingham Gazette, 5 August 1914Source: British Newspaper Archive

As this August 1914 front page (courtesy of the fascinating British Newspaper Archive's post on WWI Headlines) proclaims, Britain entered the First World War on 4 August, 1914. Earlier on the same day, Germany declared war on Belgium after the latter had attempted to remain a neutral territory. In consequence, Britain declared war on Germany late that evening. By this point, the two sides of the terrible conflict had been mustered: the Allies, which comprised Britain, France, and Russia; and the Central Powers, which included Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

A massive crowd of Londoners cheered the news of the war that night. The next morning, we might assume, many of these ghosts of 1914 opened a newspaper to take in the momentous occasion. We can read the 5 August 1914 edition of The Daily Telegraph along with some of them, thanks to the The Telegraph's wonderful online WWI newspaper resource.

Photograph of the crowd outside Buckingham Palace, London after the declaration of war against Germany, 
4 August 1914.  © National Archives, UK. 

Civilian Britons reading of their nation's entry into war were met, perhaps strangely, with a distinctly non-wartime assortment of peppy advertisements for hair products, laxatives, and vacations to Spain. Such newsprint chatter vied for space with maps of the conflict and reports of the official declaration, though. Already, some panic over war's consequences for civilian life are apparent, as one article details "Civic Cowardice" in the form of "housewives" whose frenzied stocking up on food items was already creating high prices and low supplies (p. 10). Another article insists, however, that supplies of meat and grains are plentiful (p. 9). Poignantly, an eye-catching notice reminds young unmarried men that "Your King and Country Need You!".

The Daily Telegraph, 5 August 1914, (p. 9). © The Telegraph World War One Archive

Its insistence that "each day is fraught with the gravest possibilities" and its portrayal of the Empire as being "on the brink of the greatest war in the history of the world" are both chillingly accurate and  already out-of-date. Clearly written before the awful certainty of this particular day's news, the Army notice reminds us that the gravest of possibilities for Britain in 1914 had come true.

© Fiona Robinson

1 August 1914/2014

From The Telegraph: "First World War Centenary: how events unfolded on August 1 1914"
Image © The Telegraph

One hundred years ago today: Germany declares war on Russia, 1 August 1914--a date recognized as the official start of the First World War.

And so it began to begin...

As one who hangs down-bending from the side
Of a slow-moving boat, upon the breast
Of a still water, solacing himself
With such discoveries as his eye can make
Beneath him in the bottom of the deep,
Sees many beauteous sights--weeds, fishes, flowers,
Grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more,
Yet often is perplexed, and cannot part
The shadow from the substance, rocks and sky,
Mountains and clouds, reflected in the depth
Of the clear flood, from things which there abide
In their true dwelling; now is crossed by gleam
Of his own image, by a sunbeam now,
And wavering motions sent he knows not whence,
Impediments that make his task more sweet;
Such pleasant office have we long pursued
Incumbent o'er the surface of past time
With like success, nor often have appeared
Shapes fairer or less doubtfully discerned
Than these to which the Tale, indulgent Friend!
Would now direct thy notice.

 --William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book 4, ll. 256-76

                  

Hello Readers,

It's somewhat strange, waiting with bated breath for the steady gears of history to make their circuit towards the date when we can look back exactly one hundred years to the start of the Great War. It's as though we anticipate some kind of perspicuity that, like gazing down into a glass-clear lake, is only possible when the present aligns with the past just so. Like Wordsworth's boy looking down into the "still water" and confused by the reflections therein of sky and earth and of "his own image", though, perhaps we may find (and perhaps we already know) that shadow and substance cannot be so easily separated. Though the great span of time that a centennial marks might suggest a certain poignant stillness, calming the past into clarity and granting us objective distance, our own image may surprise us in those depths. What might we learn about ourselves and our world by looking  for and listening to those ghosts of 1914? As we have for some time now on this blog, we shall continue ask to this very question. We will continue to chase shadow and substance in the (deceptively) glassy deep of hundred-year-old history.

As we near and enter the official centenary, it is my aim to direct the blog towards following events of the war's unfolding over the years 1914-1918. 

To that end, I present a small collection of articles about the events of exactly one hundred years ago, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia:

• History Channel: This Day in History: Austria-Hungary Declares War on Serbia

• The Telegraph: "WWI: 7 Days to Go"

• Mental Floss: WWI Centennial: Austria-Hungary Declares War on Serbia

• New York Times Learning Network: On this Day...(Reprint of 1914 article: "Austria Formally Declares War on Servia..."

And a last-but-not-least suggestion: hstry.org's fascinating "Back to the Mud" blog series on one man's adventure through family WWI history.


Till next time,
Fiona


© Fiona Robinson