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  3. The now extinct passenger pigeon has the dubious honor of being the last spe

The now extinct passenger pigeon has the dubious honor of being the last spe

游客2023-08-04  50
问题     The now extinct passenger pigeon has the dubious honor of being the last species anyone ever expected to disappear. At one point, there were more passenger pigeons than any other species of bird. Rough【C1】________of their population went as high as five billion and they accounted for around 40 percent of the total indigenous bird population of North America in the early 19th century.
    Despite their huge population, passenger pigeons were【C2】________to human intrusion into their nesting territory. Their nests were shabby things and two weeks after the eggs【C3】________. the parent pigeons would abandon their offspring, leaving them to take care of themselves. People discovered that these baby pigeons were really tasty, and the adult birds were also quite【C4】________. First the Native Americans and then the transplanted Europeans came to consider the birds a great【C5】________.
    By the 1850s, commercial trapping of passenger pigeons was proceeding at an【C6】________pace. Hundreds of thousands of the birds were being harvested every day to be made into popular pigeon pies. In addition, large【C7】________of the pigeons’ nesting territory were being cleared away for planting crops and creating pasture land. As numerous as the passenger pigeons were, they were not an【C8】________resource. By the 1880s, it was noticed that the bird population had become seriously【C9】________. The last passenger pigeons killed in the wild were shot in 1899.
    Eventually those billions and billions of birds shrank to a single remaining【C10】________. a passenger pigeon named Martha, who died on September 1, 1914, in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. In addition to being the end of an era, it was also the first time humans were able to exactly time the extinction of a species.
    A) vulnerable    F) refuge     K) excerpts
    B) unprecedented G) plazas     L) estimates
    C) tracts        H) infinite   M) edible
    D) specimen      I) hatched    N) depleted
    E) robust        J) expired    O) delicacy [br] 【C3】
选项
答案 I
解析 空格前为two weeks after the eggs，空格后为逗号，由此可知，此处是after引导的时间状语从句，缺少谓语动词，此处描述过去发生的事情，故应使用一般过去时。由主句the parent pigeons would abandon their offspring，leaving them to take care of themselves(亲鸽会抛弃它们的后代，让它们自己照顾自己) 可知，从句应该说的是旅鸽蛋“孵化”两周后……，故hatched符合语境。
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