Two University of Arkansas at Fayetteville professors will give natural history lovers in Northwest Arkansas a chance to learn about the passenger pigeon, the bird that once darkened the skies in huge swaths of the state for days at a time before it was hunted to extinction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Professor Nancy Glover McCartney, curator of zoology at the university's museum, and Douglas James, a professor of biological sciences, will present historical data and observations at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Hobbs State Park Visitors Center. McCartney will bring male and female taxidermied specimens of the band-tailed pigeon, a close relative to the passenger pigeon, both of which were markedly different from "city pigeons" that many people may be familiar with. James will discuss ongoing DNA experiments aimed at bringing the passenger pigeon back from extinction.

Steve Chyrchel, an interpretive guide at Hobbs, said the area in Northwest Arkansas between Van Hollow and the Benton-Madison county line was the last "stronghold" for the pigeons when they would fly south to roost in the winter. Chyrchel said the birds were decimated in large part through over-hunting, although many other simultaneous factors probably contributed to their demise.

Karen Rowe, the bird conservation program leader for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said the effect of the bird can be judged simply by looking at historical topographic maps of the state, which feature an abundance of towns and locations with names such as Pigeon Mountain, Pigeon Roost and so on.

Much of the changing landscape of Arkansas helped eliminate large portions of the passenger pigeon's roosting area as the Delta was overtaken by agricultural interests, Rowe said.

Rowe said the passenger pigeon provided a valuable lesson to be applied to modern existing species.

"We still have birds here in the state whose populations are at extremely low levels," Rowe said. "And while it's fascinating to focus on the passenger pigeon, and the lesson we can hopefully learn from it is that we still need to be active in conservation of birds such as the king rail."

Rowe said the Game and Fish Commission's most recent survey found only three king rails in the entire Delta.

"There's still a host of other species that are in precipitous decline, and it's all basically habitat-related," Rowe said. "Let's hope that, if nothing else, the passenger pigeon teaches us that we have to do something before we have two left to put in a cage in Cincinnati."

NW News on 08/26/2014