新高级阅读前（双语）63（864）

PASSAGE SIXTY-THREE

Passenger pigeons

1.Passenger pigeons once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks so large that they darkened the sky for hours.

2.It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons—a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world.

3.Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.

4.Sadly, the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. 

5.Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.

6.By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by Americans’ need for wood, which scattered the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and spring storms contributed to their decline. 

7.Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again. In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons, but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. 

8.The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.

第六十三篇

旅 鸽

1.旅鸽曾经以令人难以置信的数量飞过美国的大部分地区。从18世纪到19世纪的文字记载中可以看到，成群的鸟使天空变暗了好几个小时。

2.据计算，当它的数量达到最高点时，有超过30亿只旅鸽，这个数字相当于美国鸟类总数的24%到40%，使它可能成为世界上数量最多的鸟类。

3.即使到了1870年，当它们的数量已经越来越少的时候，在辛辛那提附近也看到了一群据信有1英里宽，320英里(约515公里)长的鸟。

4.不幸的是，大量的旅鸽可能是它们的致命伤。在鸟类最丰富的地方，人们相信那里有源源不断的供应，于是成千上万地捕杀它们。

5.商业猎人用谷物把它们吸引到小块空地上，等到鸽子定居下来进食，然后在它们身上撒上大网，一次捕获数百只。这些鸟被运到大城市，在餐馆里出售。

6.到19世纪的最后几十年，候鸽筑巢的硬木森林因美国人对木材的需求而遭到破坏，这使得候鸽群分散，迫使它们向更北的地方迁徙，那里的低温和春季风暴导致了候鸽数量的减少。

7.很快，一大群鸟群就不见了，再也看不见了。1897年，密歇根州通过了一项禁止捕杀旅鸽的法律，但到那时，该州已经有10年没有看到大规模的旅鸽群了。

8.美国最后一只被证实的野鸽是1900年由俄亥俄州派克县的一个男孩射杀的。有一段时间，少数鸟类在人类的照顾下存活了下来。最后一只被人们亲切地称为玛莎，于1914年9月1日在辛辛那提动物园去世。