On Tuesday, Joel Greenberg's book on passenger pigeons will be released. "A Feathered River Across the Sky" is the fruit of years of research, a lot of it in Ohio, into the natural and unnatural history of this utterly unique and remarkable bird. A hundred years ago, the last pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo, and the last widely-known specimen taken in the wild had been shot in Ohio's Pike County in 1900; it now rests in the Ohio Historical Society about a mile from where I sit. In one week in 1861, Circleville businesses shipped 215,000 pigeons in barrels to epicures on the east coast. In the 1880s, you could buy a pair of live cardinals in the Columbus market for two dollars, an amount that would have bought you five hundred pigeons--alive, or freshly killed--in the same venue. The story of this bird provides one superlative after another, as well as great pathos; our own species comes out not looking good at all. I've read drafts of this work, and recommend it highly. Greenberg's web site "Project Passenger Pigeon" is found at http://passengerpigeon.org/newbook.html . If you liked "Hope is the Thing with Feathers," you will be enthralled by this book. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]