The Summer Of The Pigeons

The Summer Of The Pigeons by J. MARSHALL PORTER /. Marshall Porter lives in Cumberland, Maryland. For years he has managed his Dairy Farm Equipment business and written of his interest in the land and its history. No one will ever see a wild pigeon again because they are an extinct species of birdlife. I never saw one, but as a boy my father saw them by the millions as they flew over the Appalachian Mountains in a sun-darkening, hurricane-roar of beating wings. Let me tell you the story of Wild Pigeons as my father told it to me. "The Porter Settlement on Piney Mountain in Maryland had grown from small clearings to large fields in the hundred and twenty five years since the first Porters came and built cabins near clear, strong flowing springs and began clearing farms on that mountain tableland. "We often saw great flocks of wild pigeons that looked to be miles wide, and reached from the mountain west of us to the Blue Ridge range in Virginia (a distance of seventy miles) which we could see plainly on a clear day. The migration was usually in mid-April, and they might be flying either east or west at that season when the beech and birch buds were swelling . These buds seemed to be their favorite late winter or early spring food. We could see large groups of birds break away from the main flock and circle down to the hollows where beech and birch timber grew abundantly, the sun gleaming on their slate blue wings. From where we stood, the dense mass of birds looked almost like a huge blanket as they alighted on the trees in the hollow. In the distance, we could see limbs bend and break under the weight of so many birds, causing a few dozen of them to take to their wings as the broken limbs dropped from under them. Within about a quarter hour we would see that group of pigeons fly up and join the main flock. Then we would see another group break away from the main flock and descend to the hollow where the beech and birch trees were. When summer came, we could see many dead trees in that hollow diat had been stripped of their buds by those pigeons. "The wild pigeons did not fly over our section of the mountains every year. Sometimes it would be four or five years between their flights. But one day when they flew, I was helping Uncle Sam, my father's brother, who had been nearly starved to death in the Andersonville Prison camp. He was in it from 1863 to 1865. He came back and lived on the farm with us. His health was broken, but he worked when he was well enough between sieges of ague, when he would shiver from chills on the hottest days. He was a big, strong man, and I was only fourteen, but he could hardly do as much work as I did building a stakeand -rider fence from rails he had split during the winter. 27 "The roar of the pigeon's wings in that flight sounded like a strong March wind in a leafless forest, and lasted all afternoon. The end of the east-bound flight came into view just when the sun was sinking behind the mountain west of us. We noted the diminishing roar after the last of the flock passed, but it was a full half hour until it could be heard no longer. "As we were walking home in the gathering dusk, I told Uncle Sam, ? wish the pigeons would come closer sometime. I never saw one close up.' " 'If they ever do come to this mountaintop settlement when the corn is small or the grain is in head you'll wish they hadn't come. They would starve every family on the mountain. When hungry pigeons come, they don't leave until every green blade is eaten.' "It was like an answer to my boyish wish when around the middle of June, 1887, the pigeons did come. There was no huge migration such as we saw the April before, because it was...