Page 4 - Where Have All the Birds Gone?: Nature in Crisis

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THREE

BILLION TO

ZERO

I have stood for hours admiring the movements of
these birds. I have seen them fly in unbroken lines
from the horizon, one line succeeding another from
morning until night.

—Potawatomi activist and writer Simon Pokagon

n May 1850, Simon Pokagon stepped out of his shelter. The
Itwenty-year-old Potawatomi tribal leader was camped out near
the headwaters of the Manistee River in northern Michigan. There,
a loud, strange rumbling sound greeted him. It sounded like an
army of horses with sleigh bells advancing through the woods.
Pokagon listened carefully. No, he decided, the noise wasn’t the
beating of horse hooves and the ringing of sleigh bells. It must be
distant thunder. Yet the sky was clear.
Nearer and nearer came the mysterious sound. At last, he saw
the source of the rumbling—a flying mass of millions of pigeons.

Where Have All the Birds Gone? 4