From the french passager which means "to pass by"

I have been reading about the passenger pigeon, which reportedly roosted by the hundreds of thousands over areas of hundreds of miles in Wisconsin at one point. Martha, the last captive passenger pigeon and the last known of them all, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on Sept. 1, 1914. I always think about her on my birthday.

I have been reading Wikipedia and even Wikipedia is enough to break the heart:

"One method of killing was to blind a single bird by sewing its eyes shut using a needle and thread. This bird's feet would be attached to a circular stool at the end of a stick that could be raised five or six feet in the air, then dropped back to the ground. As the bird attempted to land, it would flutter its wings, thus attracting the attention of other birds flying overhead. When the flock landed near this decoy bird, nets would trap the birds and the hunters would crush their heads between their thumb and forefinger."

I think Wisconsin, my birthplace birthright and motherland, ought to be filled with dark clouds of pigeons.