Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), male.
Undated, source unknown.
This fine specimen of a male passenger pigeon carries no record of when or where it was collected. Bowdoin students known to have prepared mounted specimens during their college years included Charles Otis Whitman (1868), who kept his room full of mounted birds, and Robert E. Peary (1877), whose taxidermy work helped to pay his school tuition. Perhaps one of them or Professor Alfred Otto Gross, who taught biology from 1912 to 1953 and brought a collection of ornithological specimens to the College, provided the bird.
This specimen retains just a hint of iridescence in the feathers on the side of its neck, a feature that made the streaming flocks flash like rainbows as they swiftly changed direction in flight. It also displays the long throat and extended tail feathers that gave the species its distinctive elegant silhouette.