{"id":8507,"date":"2014-04-13T08:32:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T15:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=8507"},"modified":"2014-04-13T15:00:54","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T22:00:54","slug":"a-passenger-pigeon-from-the-collection-of-elliott-coues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/13\/a-passenger-pigeon-from-the-collection-of-elliott-coues\/","title":{"rendered":"A Passenger Pigeon from the Collection of Elliott Coues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

In his\u00a0Birds of the Northwest<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>of 1874, Elliott Coues recalled that<\/p>\n

\n

Some years since a great flight of Pigeons occurred near Washington, where for several days, in the fall, the woods were filled with the birds…. I once killed a specimen so newly from the nest as to cause me to believe that it had been hatched in the vicinity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Coues does not tell his reader where that specimen ended up, but I think I know.<\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/a>
Photograph courtesy of National Museums Liverpool, Zoology, World Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Coues collected this fresh juvenile Passenger Pigeon<\/strong>, aged<\/a> by the “white crescentic edges of the feathers, especially on back and wings,” at the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington<\/a> on October 14, 1859. A quarter of a century later, Coues and his old field companion Webster Prentiss would recall that autumn<\/a> as “the last large flight we remember” in the area.<\/p>\n

The skin bore the number 450 in Coues’s personal cabinet, but somehow made its way into the famously vast collections of H.B. Tristram<\/a>, where it was assigned the label 17066. It is not clear when Tristram acquired the skin, as the specimen is not identifiably listed in his 1889\u00a0Catalogue<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tristram’s collection was purchased by the Liverpool Museum in 1896<\/a>, and Coues’s pigeon resides there still.<\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/a>
Photograph courtesy of National Museums Liverpool, Zoology, World Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his\u00a0Birds of the Northwest\u00a0of 1874, Elliott Coues recalled that Some years since a great flight of Pigeons occurred near Washington, where for several days, in the fall, the woods were filled with the birds…. I once killed a specimen so newly from the nest as to cause me to believe that it had been … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Passenger Pigeon from the Collection of Elliott Coues”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,109],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8507"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8507"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8517,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8507\/revisions\/8517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}