Tag: trapping

Annie Alexander’s Contribution to Passenger Pigeon Research

An eyewitness account of trapping passenger pigeons in New Jersey in the early 1800s is one of only two publications by the woman who founded one of the premier paleontological museums in America.

In 1927, a short communication was published in the journal The Condor that quoted a letter from John Thomas Waterhouse to his parents back in England. Waterhouse described how the New Jerseyans hunted passenger pigeons using nets and guns.

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Basket for Storing Live Passenger Pigeons

Basket for passenger pigeons, New Jersey State Museum
Basket for passenger pigeons, New Jersey State Museum

This mid-nineteenth century basket, on display as part of the passenger pigeon exhibit at the New Jersey State Museum, is on loan from the Schoolhouse Museum in Ridgewood, NJ. It is similar to a stool pigeon basket shown in French’s The Passenger Pigeon in Pennsylvania.