ROMKids Show: The One With the Passenger Pigeons

Tune in every Tuesday at 2 pm on Instagram Live as ROM Kids Coordinator and Camp Director Kiron Mukherjee combines his passion for children’s education with storytelling to bring to life science, history and art for you and your loved ones in the comfort of your own home. Kiron will share activities, easy at-home crafts, behind the scenes anecdotes and fun facts—all connected to the ROM collections.

This time on the ROMKids Show we fly into the sky to learn about the fascinating and tragic life of passenger pigeons. Ornithologist Mark Peck joins us to talk about the birds that used to darken the sky and what we can learn about the importance of conservation today. Then we’ll make our own spinning sky project to show us just how numerous passenger pigeons once were.

1. Place your plate on top of your paper and trace it. Then cut out the circle.
2. On your circle draw an outside environment where passenger pigeons would live. I drew a barn and a tree. I also coloured in the sky blue.
3. Next with your hole puncher, punch a bunch of holes all across the sky.
4. Turn your plate upside down, and draw a line across the middle. Colour in half black, and the other half the same colour blue as your sky.
5. Then place your drawing on top of your plate, and insert a butterfly fastener.
6. Now when you rotate the plate behind your drawing the holes in the sky will either be blue or black. When rotated to black, this symbolizes when flocks of passenger pigeons would number in the millions and block out the sun. When rotated to the colour of your sky, this symbolizes the skies that are now sadly empty of these once numerous animals.

As the ROMKids Coordinator & Camp Director, Kiron is the public face of the Royal Ontario Museum’s family and children’s programs. Kiron started volunteering at the ROM at age 14 and has never looked back. Though he majored in history at York University, Kiron also considers his early years as a ROMKids camper to be a highly formative part of his education. Now, he strives to provide engaging and educational kids’ programming so that future generations can look back on their ROM experiences as fondly as he has.