The Turtle Dove – forever associated with the festive season through the words of the seasonal song 12 Days of Christmas – is one of the fastest declining species in the country. Sightings this summer were the lowest ever and it's in serious danger of disappearing forever, says Liam Creedon

Have we learned nothing from history? Almost 100 years to the day since Martha - the world's last Passenger Pigeon died in captivity - her relative, the Turtle Dove, is disappearing before our very eyes. And far from being able to send your true love two at Christmas time, it's quite possible that there soon won't be any at all.

They once smothered the horizon in billion-strong flocks, four miles long and a mile wide. So titanic was their passing overhead that they turned day into temporary night. So vast were their colonies that sites stretched for 70 miles or more. So dense were their congregations that droppings lay a foot deep below their perches.

Everything about the Passenger Pigeon, the most abundant bird in history, was on an epic scale - a fact that makes their rapid decline and extinction within just a few decades all the more remarkable, and all the more tragic.

Almost 100 years ago to the day, Martha, the world's last Passenger Pigeon, died in captivity at Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio.

But a century later, startling parallels with the past exist for one of our most beloved birds. The Turtle Dove seems destined to follow Martha and her kin into extinction, even before our supposedly environmentally enlightened eyes.

The beginning of the end for the Passenger Pigeon, a long-tailed, bluish-grey bird, coincided with the arrival in North America of European colonists. Tasty and easy to catch, tens of millions were netted, shot and transported across the vast country to feed a rapidly growing population. So abundant was the glut of Passenger Pigeons that they were even fed to pigs. Like the cod, the bird was seen as a commodity too plentiful to ever run out. The birds were harvested on an industrial scale with a large and complex industry built around their trapping, storing and distribution.

Not only were they targeted for food though, the birds also became a focus for sport, and countless thousands were blasted from the sky as victims of the new craze of trapshooting. Birds were released from a 'trap' and driven towards waiting guns. As pigeon numbers declined, their place was taken by clay disks that were fired into the air - clay pigeon shooting had arrived.

But even when pigeon numbers fell so drastically that commercial exploitation ground to a halt, the slaughter continued. The Passenger Pigeon was unlucky enough to live in a time of scant environmental awareness and a total lack of protection for it and the habitat it depended upon.

Americans were so shocked at the speed of the Passenger Pigeon's demise that some believed the suddenly absent birds had simply migrated south. But the Passenger Pigeon's extinction cannot be dismissed as an unhappy but isolated episode from history. Here and now, in a time of wide-ranging environmental protection supported by a bird-loving population, another formerly widespread pigeon species is rapidly slipping into oblivion.

Some believe the Turtle Dove will become extinct in the UK in just 15 years. These delicate, exotically marked summer migrants are the UK's fastest declining species. Their population is currently halving every six years and today, Turtle Dove numbers stand at just five per cent of what they were in 1970. This summer is believed to have been the worst for the species on record in the UK.

Dr Mark Avery, former director of conservation at the RSPB, warns that there are alarming parallels between the plight of Passenger Pigeon, about whose demise he has written the book A Message From Martha, and the fate of the Turtle Dove.

"We drove the most numerous bird in the world to extinction in a few brief decades - this shows no species is safe. Treasure those starlings and house sparrows in your garden," he says. "The European countryside is losing its farmland birds at a terrifying rate. Will the Turtle Dove be the next Passenger Pigeon? If so, we can't say, this time, that we didn't see it coming - we know enough, but do we care enough?"

Efforts are afoot to make sure the Turtle Dove does not become another Martha. Operation Turtle Dove, a partnership between the RSPB, Conservation Grade, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and Natural England, launched in May 2012 to discover why the bird was declining so quickly. The Turtle Dove's migration route to Africa is being closely monitored, research into their English breeding grounds is being gathered and farmers are being advised how they provide food for the bird on their land.

Concerned bird lovers in the North East stepped up to help out Operation Turtle Dove. A group of friends took off on a fundraising effort last March when they walked 300 miles through the traditional summer range of the turtle dove from East Anglia to the North-East, finishing at the Satlholme bird reserve. The Dove Step walk covered 300 miles in 13 days and raised £2,500 for the cause.

Let's these and other efforts give us something to sing about next Christmas.