The New Zealand Quail (Coturnix novaezelandiae) has been officially extinct since 1875. Sir Joseph Banks was the first westerner to describe it; he was an illustrious naturalist, mostly interested in botany, who accompanied Captain James Cook on his famous sea voyage from 1768–1771, exploring the globe and dispersing invasive species around the world. Cook took several jaunts around the globe, often…
Tag: extinct birds
Hoopoe Starling
We’re back to birds now that the new year is over. Without further ado, I give you the Hoopoe Starling. The Hoopoe Starling also goes by the names Bourbon Crested Starling, Huppe, Crested Starling, or Réunion Starling. The Hoopoe Starling was discovered in 1669 and first described 1783 by the Dutch Naturalist Pieter Boddaert, who found it in its home on the island of Réunion in…
Bonin Islands Grosbeak
Back to birds! Bonin Island Grosbeaks were technically not Grosbeaks, and technically only found on one of the Bonin Islands, (though maybe at one point it had lived on more than one). So let’s start at the beginning: 1. Where are the Bonin Islands? The Bonin Islands are also known as the Ogasawara Islands, and are an archipelago of over…
Piopio
From New Zealand. They liked the forest floor and rooting around in underbrush. They built nests like little cups in trees only a few feet away from the ground. Piopios had a beautiful call, and also often mimicked the call of other birds as well. Two things did away with them: deforestation, and the introduction of new predators, particularly rats.…
Hats and Feathers
Collectors in the nineteenth century weren’t just interested in raiding nests for eggs, or collecting birds to be kept on mantelpieces. There was also the exploding market for hats with birds on them: Hats adorned with real feathers, wings, and stuffed whole wild birds were the height of fashion in the late-19th century. Woodpeckers, blue jays, waxwings and quails: all…
Shotgun Ornithology
After Audubon, ornithology began to take shape as a field of study. As an example, one of his protegees, Spencer Fullerton Baird, helped to create and direct the National Museum of Natural History for the Smithsonian. Baird cultivated a far-flung network of collectors and ornithologists who sent him specimens of birds. Many of them were US Army officers patrolling the…
Guadalupe Caracara
“No kid is safe from their attacks. Should a number be together, the birds unite their forces, and, with great noise and flapping of their wings, generally manage to separate the weakest one and dispatch it….The birds are cruel to the extreme, and the torture sometimes inflicted upon the defenseless animals is painful to witness. Even when food is plenty,…
Huia
From New Zealand. The Maori prized their feathers and wore them in battle. They made jewelry, amulets and carved boxes especially to hold Huia feathers. They gave them to each other as tokens of friendship and of respect, and used them in funeral rites. At first only powerful chiefs were allowed to wear their feathers, but soon after the Europeans…
Ohahu O’O
John Zorn named an album after this guy. They were a kind of honeyeater. Not much is known about them. Their plumage was used in robes for the Hawaiian nobility. They were native to O‘ahu and disappeared around 1837. Thirty percent of all known recently extinct birds in the world were originally from Hawaii. 70 percent of all native bird species in the…
Mascarene Parrot
Based on a colored engraving by Jacques Barraband from F. Levaillant’s Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets. Vol 2, Paris, 1801-5. Wikipedia says: The Mascarene Islands (or Mascarenhas Archipelago) is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar comprising Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues, Agaléga, Cargados Carajos shoals, plus the former islands of the Saya de Malha, Nazareth and Soudan banks.…