The Silent Sky: The Incredible Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon

The Silent Sky: The Incredible Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon is by Allan W. Eckert. It was first published in 1965, by Little, Brown & Company, simultaneously in the U.S.A. and Canada. Like The Great Auk, a previous nature novel by the same author, it is about the last individuals of a bird species on the verge of extinction.

The first chapter describes the migration of a male passenger pigeon as part of a huge flock. The rest of the book is about that male's offspring from his hatching to the end of his life some fifteen years later. The only pigeon given a name is the main character's daughter, who is taken into captivity and named Martha.

The Silent Sky contains detailed descriptions of injurings, killing, cruelty, and the loneliness of those few passenger pigeons who remain as the species' number dwindles.