Elephant Bird (Aepyornis)

 

 

 

 

Elephant birds were among the heaviest birds that have ever existed. Following the extinction of the last dinosaurs 65 million years ago, the mighty reptiles that had dominated the earth for more than 160 million years, the long overshadowed birds and mammals evolved into a great variety of new species, some of which gave rise to giants like the elephant bird.

In their general appearance, elephant birds were similar to the fiightless birds called “ratites” with which we are familiar today, such as the emu ( Dromaius novaehollandiae ), ostrich ( Struthio camelus ), rhea ( Rhea  sp.), cassowary ( Casuarius  sp.), and kiwi ( Apteryx  sp.); however, the biggest elephant bird,  Aepyornis maxiumus,  was enormous. It was about 3 m tall and probably weighed about 450 kg (the giant moa of New Zealand was actually taller but was way behind the elephant bird in terms of bulkmoa are discussed later in this chapter). On the island of Madagascar, there were few large predators, and the ancestors of the elephant birds had no need to fiy; therefore this ability was gradually lost. Grounded, these birds went on to become animals that were bound to the land. Their skeletons show that they had very powerful legs and that they plodded around Madagascar on their big feet. The wings were reduced to tiny structures and were probably not visible beneath the bird’s plumage. These birds had become so well adapted to a life without fiight that the large and specially modified chest bone (keellike sternum) found in most birds, which serves as an attachment for the wing muscles, had all but disappeared.

We don’t know exactly what the elephant birds ate, but we can assume from the shape of their bill that they were not carnivorous. Some people have suggested that certain Madagascan plants that are very rare today depended on the elephant birds for the dispersal of their seeds. The digestive system of these large birds was ideally suited to breaking down the tough outer skins of these seeds. Some were digested, but others passed through the bird intact and in a state of readiness for germination.

The remains of the elephant bird that have been found to date allow us to build up a picture of how this extinct animal lived. The most intriguing remains are the bird’s eggs. Some have been found intact, and they are gigantic—the largest single cells that have ever existed. They are about three times bigger than the largest dinosaur eggs, with a circumference of about 1 m and a length of more than 30 cm. One of these eggs contained about the same amount of yolk and white as 200 chicken’s eggs. These huge shelled reminders of the elephant bird are occasionally unearthed in the fields of Madagascan farmers, and one is even known to contain a fossilized embryo.

The number of elephant bird species that once inhabited Madagascar is a bone of contention among experts, but it is possible that Madagascar supported several species of these large birds. On their island, surrounded by abundant food and few animals to fear, especially when fully grown, the elephant birds were a successful group of animals. Then, around 2000 years ago, their easy existence was overturned as humans from Africa, Indonesia, and the islands around Australia reached this isolated land of unique natural treasures. Humans by themselves are one thing, but thousands of years ago, humans did not travel alone—they took their domestic animals with them. The elephant birds, in their 60 million years of evolution, never saw a human, and they wouldn’t have recognized them as dangerous. The humans, on the other hand, saw the elephant birds as a bounteous supply of food. Hunting had a disastrous eff  ect on the populations of these giant birds. They had evolved in the absence of predation and, as a result, probably reproduced very slowly. To add insult to injury, the animals the humans brought with them—pigs, dogs, rats, and so on—made short work of the elephant bird’s eggs. Other introduced animals, such as chickens, may have harbored diseases to which these giant birds had never been exposed. With no natural immunity to these pathogens, epidemics may have ravaged the populations of elephant birds, which were already under pressure from hunting and egg predation. Changes in climate may have led to the drying out of Madagascar, and this, too, could have aff  ected the populations of these impressive birds. The actual extinction timeline for the elephant birds is sketchy, but many experts suppose that the last of these great birds died out before 1600. The means at our disposal for the aging of ancient material are constantly improving, and some recent estimates move the disappearance of these birds into the nineteenth century. It is possible that some stragglers managed to survive until recent times, but we can be certain that no elephant birds survive today. 

Source: Wikipedia

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Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli)

 

Rising to heights of around 300 m, Stephens Island looms off   the northernmost tip of Marlborough Sound on South Island of New Zealand. The island is tiny (2.6 km2), but it is a refuge for many animals that have disappeared from the mainland since the arrival of Polynesians.

On this prominent lump of rock, there once lived a small bird known as the Stephens Island wren. This bird was unrelated to the familiar wrens of the Northern Hemisphere and actually belonged to a small group of perching birds endemic to New Zealand. The remains of this small bird have been found at various sites throughout the main islands of New Zealand, and it seems that Stephens Island was the last refuge for this bird following the arrival of humans and the animals they brought with them. One animal in particular, the Polynesian rat, wreaked havoc among the populations of New Zealand’s small endemic birds. Stephens Island served as a refuge for the wren for hundreds of thousands of years, and even after the Polynesians and their animals wiped out these small birds on the mainland, the population on Stephens Island was safe—until the arrival of Europeans.

The British commandeered New Zealand as an extension of their growing empire, and in their learned opinion, what Stephens Island needed more than anything was a lighthouse to warn ships away from the rocks. In June 1879, a track to the proposed site for the lighthouse was cleared, and five years later, the lighthouse went into operation. In itself, the  lighthouse was no threat to the wren, but in those days, lighthouses were operated by people, and people have pets—often, cats.

At some point in 1894, a pregnant cat was brought to the island, and it seems that no sooner had she arrived than she gave her new owners the slip and escaped. This unassuming cat probably didn’t realize how special she was. No predatory land mammal had ever set foot on Stephens Island, and the animals on this forested outcrop were woefully ill prepared as they had never encountered any mammal, let alone one with the predatory proclivities of the domestic cat. In June 1894, one of the off  spring of the escaped cat was apparently taken in by one of the assistant lighthouse keepers, David Lyall. Lyall had an interest in natural history, and he was intrigued by the small carcasses his young pet brought back from its forays around this previously untouched island. The carcasses were those of a tiny bird, but of a sort that Lyall had never seen. With a hunch these birds were something special, he had one sent to Walter Buller, an eminent New Zealand lawyer and ornithologist, who immediately recognized the sorry-looking carcass as an undescribed species. The bird was definitely a type of New Zealand wren, related to another small New Zealand bird, the rifleman. Unlike the rifleman, the Stephens Island bird was flightless. The larger group to which these birds belong, the perching birds (passerines), has only a couple of flightless representatives.

The only information we have on the way the Stephens Island wren lived comes from the limited observations made by Lyall. According to the only person who saw this species alive, it “ran like a mouse” and “did not fly at all.” This is about the sum of the information we have on the living bird, but the structure of the bird’s skeleton and plumage allows us to investigate if Lyall was correct. The skeleton of this tiny bird bears all the hallmarks of a species that had given up the power of flight, and the plumage does not appear to be up to the job of flapping flight. We can’t rule out the possibility that this tiny bird ran and leapt or glided to catch aerial insects, but it would not have been capable of flapping its wings to any great effect. The great tragedy is that this tiny bird died out before we could learn anything more about it.

In 1894, Lyall brought a total of 16 to 18 specimens of Stephens Island wren to the attention of the scientific establishment. It is not clear if his cat caught all of these, but late in 1894, news of this bird had circulated in the ornithological community, and some collectors were willing to pay big money for a specimen—Lionel Walter Rothschild, the famous British collector, purchased nine specimens alone. With such a high price on the heads of these diminutive birds, can we be sure that Lyall didn’t go and catch some himself to supplement his income? We’ll never know, but the cats and the greed were too much for the Stephens Island wren, and before 1894 was out, the species was extinct—discovery and extinction all in the space of one year. This is pretty impressive, even by human standards of devastation. 

Source: Wikipedia

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Quelili (Caracara lutosa)

 

 

Two hundred and forty miles off the northwest coast of Mexico lies the island of Guadalupe, a small volcanic island, 35 km long and about 9 km at its widest point. Even though it is barely a speck in the vastness of the Pacifi  c Ocean, Guadalupe was once home to a number of animals that were found nowhere else. One of the most famous Guadalupe residents was the quelili. This bird of prey was very closely related to the caracaras of Central and South America, and perhaps the ancestors of the quelili found themselves on the remote, rocky outpost of Guadalupe after being blown from the mainland during a storm.

The caracaras are all meat eaters, but they don’t have the hunting prowess of eagles or falcons. They are quite feeble flyers and are unable to swoop on their prey from a great height. Instead, they prefer to catch and eat small prey that can be easily overpowered, and they often resort to scavenging. The English-speaking inhabitants of Guadalupe called the quelili the “eagle,” but like the other caracaras, the quelili was no formidable aerial hunter. It apparently fed on small birds, mice, shellfi  sh, worms, insects, and carrion when the opportunity arose.

There are a few accounts of how the living quelili behaved. Its broad wings were suited to loping flight quite close to the ground, and like the other caracara species, it may have been equally at home on the ground, stalking among the low vegetation on its long legs. Small flocks of these birds were often seen in flight, but it is unclear if there was an ordered social structure. Living caracaras are normally solitary, but they will tolerate each other around a carcass, albeit with bouts of noisy quarreling. Perhaps the quelili was a little friendlier to others of its kind. They were known to communicate with complex displays, one of which involved the bird extending its neck to full length and then arching backward until its head almost touched its back (the crested caracara displays in the same way). Unfortunately, the signifi  cance of these displays is now lost, but perhaps it was the way that one quelili asserted dominance over another.

The quelili was probably the dominant predatory land animal on Guadalupe for tens of thousands of years, but due to its position in the food chain and the small size of its island home, it would never have been very common. An island like Guadalupe could have never supported more than a couple hundred quelili, but in the narrow geological window in which it lived, this bird was a successful scavenger and predator.

This success continued up until the early eighteenth century, at which time humans appeared on the scene. The first humans to make any real diff  erence to the ecology of Guadalupe were whalers and hunters, who came to catch and kill sea otters, fur seals, and elephant seals. On their ships, they carried goats as a source of meat and milk, and as a way of caching supplies on their hunting routes, they left some goats on Guadalupe. The idea was that the goats would survive and the whalers could pick up some fresh meat and milk the next time they were passing. Not only did the goats survive, but they bred in profusion, and before long, there were thousands of them running riot over the once virginal land. Goats in the wrong place can be devastating, as any gardener will attest. They eat anything and everything, and the numerous unique plants that covered Guadalupe were stripped away by thousands of hungry mouths. This in itself was not the nail in the coffin of the quelili, but the huge herds of goats soon attracted people. Some came to herd the goats and others came to hunt them, and herder and hunter alike both considered the quelili to be a meddlesome foe that would kill and eat goat kids whenever the opportunity arose. It is very unlikely that the quelili could have captured and killed a healthy goat kid, but it was probably partial to the flesh of a goat carcass. Goatherders may have seen a group of quelili tearing at the carcass of a dead goat kid and presumed the birds were responsible for its death.

By the nineteenth century, the quelili was goat enemy number one and it was hunted mercilessly. By the 1860s, rifles and poison had pushed it to the brink of extinction. As if angry goatherders were not bad enough, the quelili soon found itself pitted against an even more relentless foe: the ornithological collector. The age of discovery gripped the educated world, and the race to collect and catalogue the world’s treasures was well and truly on. Rarities are coveted by collectors, and institutions and wealthy individuals soon got wind of the disappearing Guadalupe bird fauna, including the quelili. Back in the nineteenth century, the word conservation didn’t really exist, and the collectors systematically exterminated the quelili; the skins were sold to the highest bidder.

Amazingly, one small group of quelilis survived this onslaught, but these were accounted for by Rollo Beck, an ornithologist and collector who landed on the island on December 1, 1900. No sooner had he landed on the island than he saw a flock of 11 quelili heading straight for him. In the mistaken belief that the bird was still common, he shot all but two of the flock, and in doing so, Rollo Beck consigned the quelili to extinction.

Source: Wikipedia

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Eskimo Curlew ( Numenius borealis)

The story of the Eskimo curlew is a sad tale of greed and senseless waste and a perfect example of how destructive our species can be. The Eskimo curlew was a small wading bird, no more than 30 cm long, with an elegant, 5-cm-long beak. Like the other curlew species, the Eskimo curlew had a distinctive, beautiful call, and the Inuit name for this bird,  pi-pi-pi-uk,  is an imitation of the sound they made on the wing and on the ground. 

The Eskimo curlew may have been a small bird, but it was one of the most accomplished globetrotters that has ever graced the skies. Like many other species of wading bird, this curlew spent its time between northern breeding grounds and southern wintering grounds. Traveling between the two was no mean feat, and the small birds had to embark on one of the most complex and dangerous migrations in the animal kingdom. As the short, northern summer ended and the curlew’s young had been reared, the birds took to wing for the beginning of an arduous and dangerous journey. Its migration took it in an immense clockwise circle, starting from the subarctic Canadian tundra, through the Western Hemisphere and east through Labrador, down through the Atlantic and across the southern Caribbean. The birds continued this epic journey until they reached their wintering grounds on the Argentinean Pampas. Some of the migrating birds went even further, eventually reaching Chile. The birds would spend a few months in South America until the spring returned to the north and the pull of hundreds of thousands of years of habitual behavior forced them into the air, en masse, for the return leg. The return to the breeding grounds took them through Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. Completing such an arduous migration, nonstop, was an impossible task, so the enormous flock often alighted to refuel. The prairies of the Midwest were favored refueling stops, and the birds used their long bills to probe the soil for insect eggs, larvae, and pupae. Interestingly, it is thought that these refueling stops were heavily dependent on the Rocky Mountain locust, another extinct animal that once lived in unparalleled aggregations.  

The risks of this journey were varied and grave. The North Atlantic is ravaged by storms, and each year, many of the curlews were blown off   course to fi  nd themselves alone and hungry in the cold expanse of the North Atlantic. Some stragglers even found their way to Britain and the decks of Atlantic ships. It seems that the entire world population of Eskimo curlew lived and traveled as one immense flock, which, at its peak, probably numbered in the millions. There is protection in numbers, but each year, many individuals were undoubtedly picked off   by predators or perished due to exhaustion. These risks were intensified massively when Europeans started to settle North America. 

Because the curlew flew in such great flocks, the settlers called them prairie pigeons, recalling the enormous flocks of passenger pigeons that blotted out the sun in eastern North America. There are accounts of an Eskimo curlew flock of 1860 measuring more than 1 km long and wide. Any animal that is edible and exists in huge numbers quickly attracts the attention of hunters, and unfortunately, the curlew was both of these things. The curlew may have seemed numerous, but the enormous flock the hunters preyed on was the entire global population of this bird, and hunting quickly took its toll. During the birds’ feeding stops on their long route north, the hunters would close in on the flock and, sensing danger, the birds would take to the wing, an effective defense against land predators and birds of prey but completely useless against shotguns. The birds were so tightly spaced as they left the ground that a single blast from a shotgun, with its wide spread of shot, could easily kill 15 to 20 individuals. The birds were shot in such huge numbers that countless numbers of them were simply left to rot in big piles. The rest were taken away, piled high on horse-pulled carts. Such senseless slaughter of the Eskimo curlew on its northbound journey was bad enough, but it was not long before the hunters turned their attention to the birds’ breeding grounds. 

During the northern summer, in anticipation of their long migration south, the birds fed on the swarms of insects that plague the tundra in the fleeting warmth, and as a result, they grew very fat. Hunters called these well-fed birds “doughbirds,” and even these were not safe. The hunters would fi  nd their roosting grounds and slaughter them under the cover of darkness, using lanterns to dazzle them and sticks to club them. The fattened birds that survived took to the wing for the start of their migration, but gales would often blow them into New England, and this was the signal for every man with a gun to come out and harvest the poor animals. In the 1830s and 1840s, the birds were blown off   course and ended up in Nantucket. The populace killed the birds so mercilessly that the island’s supply of powder and shot ran dry, interrupting the slaughter.  Under such intense hunting pressure, the Eskimo curlew was doomed. In 1900, Paul Hoagland was hunting with his father near Clarks, Nebraska. They scared 70 Eskimo curlews into taking flight and followed them to a newly plowed fi  eld. They killed 34 of the birds with four shots. In 1911, the same man came across eight of the birds, and he killed seven of them. Reduced from an enormous flock covering an area equivalent to around 38 football fi  elds, this sorry collection of birds was the last to be seen in Nebraska. Since 1900, 20 Eskimo curlews have been collected by ornithologists, and in 1964, the last confi  rmed individual of this species was shot in Barbados. Lonely individuals may still plow the old migration routes, but it is very likely this species is gone for good.

Source: Wikipedia

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Labrador Duck

The Labrador Duck was also known as a Pied Duck, a vernacular name that it shared with the Surf Scoter and theCommon Goldeneye (and even the American Oystercatcher), a fact that has led to difficulties in interpreting old records of these species, and also as Skunk Duck. Both names refer to the male's striking white/black piebald coloration. Yet another common name was Sand Shoal Duck, referring to its habit of feeding in shallow water. The closest evolutionary relatives of the Labrador Duck are apparently the scoters (Melanitta) (Livezey, 1995).

The extinction of the Labrador Duck is still not fully explained. Although hunted for food, this duck was considered to taste bad, would rot quickly and fetched a low price. Consequently, it was not sought much by hunters. However, it is thought that the eggs may have been over-harvested, and it may have been subject to depredations by the feather trade in its breeding area as well. Another possible factor in the bird's extinction was the decline in mussels and other shellfish on which they are believed to have fed in their winter quarters, due to growth of population and industry on the Eastern Seaboard. Although all sea ducks readily feed on shallow-water molluscs, no Western Atlantic bird species seems to have been as dependent on such food as much as the Labrador Duck (Bangs in Phillips, 1926).

Source: Wikipedia

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Huia

The Huia was found throughout the North Island before humans arrived in New Zealand. The Māori arrived around 800 years ago, and by the arrival of European settlers in the 1840s, habitat destruction and hunting had reduced the bird's range to the southern North Island. However, Māori hunting pressures on the Huia were limited to some extent by traditional protocols. The hunting season was from May to July when the bird's plumage was in prime condition, while a rāhui (hunting ban) was enforced in spring and summer. It was not until European settlement that the Huia's numbers began to decline severely, due mainly to two well-documented factors: widespread deforestation and overhunting.

Source: Wikipedia

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Great Auk

The Great Auk was the only species in the genus Pinguinus, flightless giant auks from the Atlantic, to survive until recent times, but is extinct today. It was also known as garefowl, or penguin.

Standing about 75 centimetres or 30-34 inches high and weighing around 5 kg, the flightless Great Auk was the largest of the auks. It had white and glossy black feathers. In the past, the Great Auk was found in great numbers on islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland and Great Britain, but it was eventually hunted to extinction. Remains found in Floridan middens suggest that at least occasionally, birds ventured that far south in winter as recently as in the 14th century.

Source: Wikipedia

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Upland Moa

The Lesser Megalapteryx or Upland Moa (Megalapteryx didinus) was a species of ratite bird endemic to New Zealand. Ratites are flightless birds with a sternum without a keel. They also have a distinctive palate. The origin of these birds is becoming clearer as it is now believed that early ancestors of these birds were able to fly and flew to the southern areas that they have been found in. It was the last moa species to become extinct, vanishing around 1500; possibly, some isolated populations managed to persist until about the early 19th century.

Source: Wikipedia

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Moa-nalo

Some moa-nalo fossils have been found to contain traces of mitochondrial DNA which were compared to living duck species in order to establish their place in the duck family, Anatidae (Sorenson et al., 1999). Contrary to the expectations of some scientists, the moa-nalo were not related to the large geese (Anserinae) but instead the dabbling ducks of the genus Anas, which includes the mallard. Indeed, the present DNA analysis' resolution is not high enough to determine their relationships to different species of Anas, but biogeography strongly suggests that their closest living relative is the widespread Pacific Black Duck.[citation needed]

From the DNA sequences it has been estimated that the ancestors of the moa-nalo reached the Hawaiian Islands about 3.6 million years ago, by which time the genus Anas was already distributed worldwide. There they increased in size, but must have retained the ability to fly until they had spread to the newer islands. They seem to have lost the power of flight by the time the main island of Hawaiʻi had emerged from the sea (400,000 years ago); there, their niche was filled by one or two species of now extinct giant Branta goose presumably related to the surviving Nēnē.

Source: Wikipedia

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Heath Hen

The Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido), a small wild fowl, was a relative of the prairie chicken. It was once considered quite tasty and was rather easy to kill. Prior to the American Revolution, the heath hen was found in the eastern United States from Maine to Virginia.Expanding human populations in colonies caused great reductions in heath hen populations. By the 1870s the only heath hens left, occupied a tiny island called Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In 1907 there were only 50 heath hens left on Martha's Vineyard. The following year a 1600-acre sanctuary was established for their protection.

Protection at the sanctuary seemed to be successful. The original 50 protected birds reproduced rapidly and there were 2,000 individuals by 1915. The entire heath hen population, however, was still confined to Martha's Vineyard. It is sad to say that in 1916 a fire wiped out much of the habitat that heath hens used for breeding, the following winter was unusually harsh, and there was an influx of goshawks that fed on the heath hens, which hurt the population even more. Finally, many of the remaining heath hens fell victim to a poultry disease brought to the island by domestic turkeys. There were only 13 heath hens left by 1927 and most of these were males. The last living heath hen, the final survivor of his species, was seen on March 11, 1932. He died that year.

The last birds were wiped out by a series of relatively common, but deadly, natural events: fire, starvation, predation, and disease. But the heath hen's continued existence as a species would not have been so vulnerable to these occurrences if their populations had not been severely reduced already by human hunting. In its former range, the heath hen easily could have survived any one of these stresses, or even all of them in combination. This also shows that designating a protective zone, or prohibiting the direct killing of an endangered species, does not guarantee survival of the species.

Source: Wikipedia

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Hawaiian Crow

The last Hawaiian crows were found only in one part of the Hakalau National Wildlife Refuge in Hawaii. The IUCN database entry states: "The last two known wild individuals of this species disappeared in 2002, so the species is now classified as Extinct in the Wild."

Source: Wikipedia

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Spix's Macaw

Spix's Macaw, also called the Little Blue Macaw, was known for its beautiful blue feathers. While some still exist in captivity, these tiny blue birds are extinct in the wild.

Cause of extinction: Habitat destruction and illegal trapping and trade contributed to the macaw's dwindling numbers.

Source: Wikipedia

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Po'ouli

A native of Maui, Hawaii, the Po'ouli, or Black-faced Honeycreeper, was only discovered in the 1970s. The birds inhabited the southwestern slope of Haleakala volcano. But the population declined rapidly, and by 1997 there were only three known Po'ouli left. Efforts to mate the remaining birds failed and the species was formally declared extinct seven years later.

Cause of extinction: Habitat loss, along with disease, predators and a decline in its food source — native tree snails are all seen as reasons for the bird's demise.

Source: Wikipedia

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Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)

 

 

Few animals have fascinated humanity for as long as the parrots and their relatives. Indigenous people in the tropics and people from Western societies alike covet these birds, not only for their beautiful appearance, but also for their playfulness and the ability of some species to mimic the human voice. The inherent beauty and charm of these birds makes it hard to understand why humans would willingly seek to wipe them out, but this is exactly what has happened on a number of occasions.

One of the most tragic examples of how humans have actively exterminated one of these interesting birds is the tale of the Carolina parakeet, a beautiful bird and the only native parrot of the United States. Around 30 cm long and 250 g in weight, this colorful bird was very common in the eastern deciduous forests of the United States, and especially in the dense woodland skirting the many great rivers of this region. The birds normally lived in small groups, although larger flocks would gather in the presence of abundant food, and it was not unusual to see 200 to 300 birds in a brilliant, raucous gathering. Like so many other parrots, the Carolina parakeet was a monogamous, long-lived species that brooded two white eggs in the cavities of deciduous trees. During most of the day, the Carolina parakeet would roost in the highest branches, and it was only in the morning and evening that the small flocks would take to the wing in search of food and water. Like other parrots, it could use its strong bill to crack open seeds and nuts to get at their nutritious contents.

The productive lands of North America suited the Carolina parakeet, and for hundreds of thousands of years, this bird brought a riot of color to the deciduous forests of this continent. Even when the fi  rst humans to colonize North America encroached on the woodlands of the Carolina parakeet, it continued to thrive. The turning point in the survival of this species came with the arrival of Europeans. The ways of the Europeans were very different to the ways of the American Indians, and they cleared large areas of forest to make way for agriculture. for roosting and nesting places, but also for food. Initially, the loss of habitat did not aff  ect the parakeet too badly as it adapted to feed on the seeds of the European’s crops, including apple, peach, mulberry, pecan, grape, dogwood, and various grains. This adaptability brought the parakeet into conflict with farmers, who saw the colorful bird as no more than a troublesome pest. The slaughter of the Carolina parakeet began, and from that point on, it was doomed. Farmers would seek out the small flocks and kill one or two birds to trigger an interesting behavior that was to seal the parakeet’s fate: Hearing the gunshots, the birds would take to the wing but would quickly return to their fallen flock mates, hovering and swooping over the lifeless bodies. The significance of this behavior is unknown, but it was probably a way of intimidating and confusing predators in the hope that the downed bird was only injured, thus giving it time to escape. This was probably a very successful strategy against predatory mammals and birds, but a man armed with a gun was a very different opponent. As the rest of the flock attended the bodies of the fallen, the hunter was able to pick off   more of the unfortunate birds, and it was not unusual for an entire flock to be wiped out in this way.

The years passed, and the Carolina parakeet lost more and more habitat and suffered the continued persecution of ignorant humans. To make matters worse, thousands of the birds were captured for the pet trade, and thousands more were killed to supply the hat trade with colorful feathers for the latest in fashionable ladies’ head wear. The senseless slaughter and collection continued, and by the 1880s, it was very clear that the Carolina parakeet was very rare. In 1913, the last Carolina parakeet in the wild, a female, was collected near Orlando in Florida, and only four years later, the last captive individual, a male by the name of Inca, died in Cincinnati Zoo only six months after the death of his lifelong partner, Lady Jane. They had lived together in captivity for 32 years. The sad and needless extinction of this interesting bird mirrors the demise of the passenger pigeon, and ironically, both species met their end in a small cage in the same zoo, poignant reminders of human ignorance, greed, and disregard for the other species with which we share this planet.

Source: Wikipedia

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Bachman’s Warblers

A recently extinct species, Bachman's warblers nested in the underbrush of forested swamps in the region bounded by Louisiana up to Kentucky and Maryland, and over to the Carolinas and Georgia, migrating to Cuba in winters. None have been seen since the early 1960s in North America and they were listed as endangered in 1967.

The last confirmed sightings were in 1988 and before that in 1961 in South Carolina. The Bachman's Warbler's last stronghold was in I'on Swamp, South Carolina. Habitat destruction was probably the main cause of its disappearance. Its extinction is not yet officially announced, because habitat remaining in Congaree National Park needs to be surveyed.

Furthermore, on January 14, 2002, a bird reminiscent of a female Bachman's Warbler was filmed at Guardalavaca, Cuba. As Vermivora warblers are not known to live more than about 7 years, if the identification is correct it would imply that a breeding population managed to survive undiscovered for decades. The female warbler incubates her eggs while father goes looking out for food.

Source: Wikipedia

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Ivory-bill Woodpecker

This elusive woodpecker known to be extinct in 1940s was seen again. On February 11, 2004, a kayaker caught a glimpse of a huge and unusual woodpecker in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge of Arkansas. The encounter spurred an extensive scientific search for a species that many feared had vanished forever, driven to extinction by the destruction of southern old-growth forests. Further evidence and search proved that at least one of these species is still alive.

Source: Wikipedia

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Dodo (Raphus Cucullatus)

 

 

 

 

“As dead as a dodo!” No phrase is more synonymous with extinction than this one. The dodo is the animal that springs to mind when we think of extinction. Often portrayed as a stupid, bumbling giant of a bird, the dodo was actually a very interesting animal that was perfectly adapted to its island habitat. Unfortunately, its evolutionary path had never counted on humans; thus, when we discovered these birds, they didn’t last very long.  

We don’t know exactly what the dodo looked like as no complete skin specimen exists, but we do know it was a large bird, about the same size as a large turkey, with a stout build, sturdy legs, thick neck, and large head. Fully grown specimens were probably around 25 kg in weight and as tall as 1 m. The dodo’s most characteristic feature was its very large beak (up to 23 cm long), complete with bulbous, hooked tip. The wings were stubby and eff  ectively useless as the dodo evolved on an island where there were no predators, and therefore flight was an expensive waste of energy; instead, it ambled about on the forest floor of its Mauritian home. The only information we have on what the dodo ate is from the accounts of seafaring people who stopped off   on the island of Mauritius and saw the bird going about its everyday business. The favored food of the dodo was probably the seeds of the various Mauritian forest trees, but when its normal source of food became scarce in the dry season, it may have resorted to eating anything it could find. A liking for seeds ties in with other observations of the dodo’s behavior, which report that it ate stones. These stones passed into the dodo’s crop, which is like a big, muscular bag, and there they assisted in grinding the hard-shelled seeds.  

As the dodo couldn’t fly, it could only build its nest on the ground. Sailors described these nests as being a bed of grass, onto which a single egg was laid. The female incubated the egg herself and tended the youngster when it hatched. Sailors who saw the living birds said the young dodo made a call like a young goose. Apart from small pieces of information, we know very little about the behavior of the dodo. We have no idea if they lived in social groups or how the adults interacted during the breeding season. What we do know is that they were hopelessly ill adapted to deal with human disturbance.  

The dodo was first described in 1598, although Arab voyagers and Europeans had discovered Mauritius many years previously and had undoubtedly seen its unique animals. The large dodo excited hungry seafarers who had not eaten fresh meat for many months while out at sea; however, the flesh of the dodo was far from flavorsome. Even the unpleasant taste of the dodo’s tough flesh didn’t stop people from killing them for food, often in large numbers, and any birds that could not be eaten straight away were salted and stored on the ship for the rest of the voyage. Hunting the dodo was said to be a very easy exercise. It couldn’t fly or even run at any great speed, and it also had the great misfortune of being completely unafraid of humans. Dodos had never seen a human, and as a result, they had not learned to be afraid. It is said they would waddle up to a club-wielding sailor only to be dispatched with one quick swipe. In the rare situation in which they felt threatened, they would use their powerful beak to good eff  ect and deliver a painful nip.  

Hunting obviously hit the dodos hard—their size and small clutches suggests that they were long-lived, slow-breeding birds, which was not a problem in the absence of predators, but as soon as humans and their associated animals entered the equation, extinction was inevitable. Seafarers who visited Mauritius brought with them a menagerie of animals, including dogs, pigs, rats, cats, and even monkeys. These animals disturbed the nesting dodos and ate the lonesome eggs. With this combination of hunting, nest disturbance, and egg predation, the dodo was doomed. It has been suggested that flash flooding could have tipped the dodo population, already ravaged by hunting, nest disturbance, and egg predation, over the edge into extinction. Regardless of the causes, the enigmatic dodo was wiped out in a little over 100 years after it was fi  rst discovered by Europeans.

Source: Wikipedia

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Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx, whose discovery in the mid-1800s turned the world of paleontology upside down. It looked like some sort of feathered dinosaur, but it also had a number of bird characteristics. Was it a bird, a dinosaur or some other beast entirely? Clues would come in time, but only after decades of contentious debate and close examination.

In order to fully understand the natural history of Archaeopteryx, one needs first to take a look at some of its unusual characteristics. Its dinosaur features include a full set of teeth, a flat breastbone, a bone tail and claws on the end of its wing. On the other hand, its feathers and wings also made it quite birdlike. However, details of Archaeopteryx anatomy indicated that it was not ideally built for flight and probably spent as much time running, leaping, climbing and gliding as it did flying.

So what was this enigmatic animal? It is now widely believed that Archaeopteryx is the most primitive known bird, with several specimens dating back about 150 million years to the Jurassic Period. It is also an evolutionary link between modern birds and a group of dinosaurs that roamed the earth 150 million years ago. Thus, it is one of the most important fossil species ever found.

Source: Wikipedia

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Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

 

 

In the late nineteenth century, anybody who suggested that the passenger pigeon was in danger of imminent extinction would have been branded a fool. The passenger pigeon existed in such colossal numbers that it is astonishing that it is no longer with us. The species as so numerous that there are many accounts of the bird itself and the enormous flocks in which it collected. Estimates for the total number of passenger pigeons in North America go as high as 9 billion individuals. If these estimates are anywhere near the true number, then the passenger pigeon was undoubtedly one of the most numerous bird species that has ever lived. This enormous population was not evenly spread, but was concentrated in gigantic flocks so large that observers could not see the end of them and so dense that they blocked out the sun. Some records report flocks more than 1.6 km wide and 500 km long—a fluttering expanse of hundreds of millions of passenger pigeons. We can only imagine what one of these flocks looked like, but we can be sure that it was quite a spectacle.

Apart from its propensity for forming huge flocks, the passenger pigeon was quite similar in appearance to a domestic pigeon, although it was considerably more graceful, with a slender body and long tail. Most pigeons are built for speed, but the passenger  pigeon was a real racer. Its tapering wings, powerful breast muscles, and slender body gave it a real turn of speed. There is anecdotal evidence that these birds could reach speeds of 160 km per hour, although they usually flew at 100 km per hour. The aerial abilities of the passenger pigeon came in very handy as it was a migratory species. As the summer arrived in the northern latitudes, the birds would leave their wintering grounds in southern North America and head for the lush forests of the United States and Canada, although their aggregations appeared to be particularly dense on the eastern seaboard. They came to these immense forests (only remnants of which remain today) to raise young on a diet of tree seeds (mast), forming huge nesting colonies in the tall trees. As with most pigeons, the nest of the passenger pigeon was a rudimentary aff  air of twigs that served as a platform for a single egg. The parent birds nourished their hatchling on crop milk, the cheeselike substance secreted from the animals’ crops that is unique to pigeons.

This cycle of migration had probably been going on for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, but all was about to come to an end as Europeans fi  rst arrived in the Americas. Their arrival signaled the end for the passenger pigeon, and many more species besides. Europeans, in their attempts to settle these new lands, brought with them new ways and means of growing food. The forests were hacked down to make way for these crops, and the passenger pigeons were quick to exploit this new source of food. Settlers fi  rst killed the passenger pigeons to protect their crops, but they soon realized that these birds were a massive source of nutritious food, and the slaughter began in earnest. The adult birds were normally preyed on when they were nesting. Trappers equipped with nets constructed smoky fi  res beneath the nesting trees to force the adults into taking flight. Trees with lots of nests were cut down, enabling trappers to get their hands on the young pigeons. The slaughter was senseless and wasteful, with often only the feathers of the birds being taken to be used as stuffing. Of course, the birds were valued as cheap food, and millions of birds were taken by train to the big cities on the East Coast of the United States. It has been said that during the end of the eighteenth century and for much of the nineteenth century, servants and slaves in these big cities may have eaten precious little animal protein apart from passenger pigeon meat. For several decades, passenger pigeons ready for the oven could be bought for as little as three pennies.

By 1896, only 250,000 passenger pigeons remained, grouped together in a single flock, and in the spring of that year, a group of well-organized hunters set out to fi  nd them. Find them they did, and they killed all but 5,000 of them. Only three years later, the last birds in the wild were shot. Once the most numerous bird on the whole planet, the passenger pigeon had been wiped out in a little more than 100 years.

Source: Wikipedia

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