IELTSΑκρόασηΕξάσκηση31

The correct answer is eastern. The lecturer says the passenger pigeon lived almost entirely in the eastern half of North America.

Associated Text:
it was very much an eastern species rather than a western one.

The correct answer is southern. The lecturer says the great deciduous forests the species depended on covered the eastern United States and southern Canada.

Associated Text:
The species was utterly dependent on a particular kind of habitat: large continuous forests, particularly the great deciduous forests that covered the eastern United States and southern Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The correct answer is preferred. The lecturer says the pigeon's preferred food was acorns from oak trees.

Associated Text:
The pigeon's preferred food was acorns from oak trees, although it also took beechnuts, chestnuts and various berries when it could get them.

The correct answer is flocks. The birds travelled in enormous flocks that darkened the sky for hours.

Associated Text:
The passenger pigeon travelled in flocks that quite literally darkened the sky.

The correct answer is telegraph. Hunters used telegraph reports to learn where the flocks had landed and to converge quickly.

Associated Text:
From the 1850s onwards, the technology that made the commercial slaughter possible was the telegraph.

The correct answer is railways. Railways allowed pigeon carcasses to be shipped in bulk to major cities.

Associated Text:
The rapid spread of the rail network from the 1840s onwards meant that pigeon carcasses, which had previously had no significant commercial value because they could not be moved, could now be shipped in bulk, in barrels of ice, to the great cities

The correct answer is markets. Big-city markets sold cheap pigeon meat and created constant demand.

Associated Text:
Once the carcasses arrived in New York, Chicago and Boston, urban markets sold pigeon meat at extraordinarily low prices, sometimes a cent or two per bird

The correct answer is nesting. Hunters attacked the birds at nesting sites, where millions were easy to capture.

Associated Text:
From the 1860s onwards, the species was attacked relentlessly at its nesting sites, and that is ultimately what proved fatal.

The correct answer is wild. The lecturer says the last verified wild bird was shot around the turn of the century, meaning this was the final confirmed individual outside captivity.

Associated Text:
The last verified wild bird was shot around the turn of the century in Ohio.

The correct answer is thirty. The lecturer says the last surviving pigeon had been part of a small captive group for nearly thirty years.

Associated Text:
She was a single elderly female bird who had been part of a small captive group for nearly thirty years, and she was given the name Martha by the zoo staff.