Lost Birds of Canal Days

Lost Birds of Canal Days. . , If you had walked along this path back in the 1840s, you might have seen some birds that you don’t see today. One might have been the greater prairie-chicken. First you might have heard a low-pitched call, like the sound of blowing across a bottle. Then you’d have seen several brown birds strutting about, calling and stamping their feet. As you got closer, you could see that they had bright orange sacs on their necks that they could inflate. And they have feathers on their necks that stick up like ears! The are the males showing off on their “lek” or special display grounds. The females, nearby, seem not to be paying attention, but why else would they be here?, Prairie-chickens are extirpated from Indiana, but can still be found in southern Illinois and farther west, in tallgrass prairie habitat., You might also have seen a huge flock of passenger pigeons as you walked the towpath. Unfortunately, they are now extinct, not just extirpated. The flocks that darkened the sky when our country was young were hunted so severely that the last one, named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Find a Mourning Dove and imagine it a little bigger, with a pinkish-orange chest and slate-blue wings. That’s the closet you can come to seeing what the early “canawlers” must have marveled at., Did you know that Indiana used to have parrots? Yes, we had flocks of Carolina parakeets. That ate cockleburs and sycamore seed balls – and the settlers’ fruit crops. They could survive Indiana winters by roosting in big hollow trees, so why are they gone? They may have gotten sick from poultry diseases, but also they would come to “help” a wounded parakeet. That behavior was effective against animal predators, but when hunters came, it only made it easier to shoot more parakeets., Here's a mystery that can never be solved: If a cat were to eat the entrails of a Carolina parakeet, the cat would die. Several early naturalists told this story. Is it true, or just a legend? There’s no way to tell now: the very last Carolina parakeet died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918., [Captions]: , Places like Eagle Marsh help all birds survive. If enough people care, we won’t lose any more species. This sign was funded by the Canal Society of Indiana, which honors the colorful history of the Wabash and Erie Canal (1832-1874). Information about the birds was provided by members of Stockbridge Audubon Society., When the Wabash and Erie Canal was new, a contest was held on July 4, 1837 to see which canal boat could be the first to travel from Fort Wayne to Wabash. The winner was the “Prairie Hen.” Its captain, Ed Patchin, won a $50 prize after quietly sneaking past Dana Columbia’s “Indiana” in the dark.