Passenger Pigeons in Fiction

“Empty Nests” [Summer 2014] mentions UW scientists who have kept the passenger pigeon’s memory alive. I’d like to add Carol Ryrie Brink, author of Caddie Woodlawn (1935), to this list. Brink describes the annual migration of passenger pigeons over a farm south of Menomonie in the fall of 1864. Although Caddie realizes that neighboring farmers and Native Americans depend on the sale of slaughtered pigeons for extra income, she has a premonition that such easy hunting will not last. Her father instructed his sons and hired men not to kill more birds than could be eaten.

Lenore Maruyama ’61, MA’62
Honolulu, Hawaii

Published in the Fall 2014 issue