The story The Tanna Ground-dove is known today from just a single, rather crude, painting by Georg Forster that was produced during Captain Cook’s second voyage around the world. This painting is in the Forster portfolio at the Natural History Museum, London, and in the margin the following words are inscribed: Tanna, female, 17th August […]
Stephens Wren (Xenicus lyalli)
The story Although so tiny in size the Stephens Wren was an altogether remarkable creature. It may have had the smallest natural range of any known bird. It may have been the only flightless passerine. It may have been the only creature discovered and then exterminated by a single animal – a lighthouse keeper’s cat. […]
Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus)
The story One member of this order, the Spectacled Cormorant, can confidently be listed as extinct, but there is one other rather mysterious form that may be. This is a bird known as Kenyon’s Shag (Phalacrocorax kenyoni). It is identified from just three specimens from Amchitka Island, in the Aleutian Archipelago of the north Pacific, […]
Samoan Moorhen (Gallinula pacifica)
The story There seem to be eleven specimens of this species in the world’s museums, the first collected during 1869 and the last perhaps a mere five years later. Since then the species has never more been located. Little is known of it other than that it inhabited the Samoan island of Savaii. It was […]
Ryukyu Woodpigeon (Columba jouyi)
The story This species, closely related to the last, occurred on the Ryukyu and Daito Islands, another of the island groups to the south of Japan. It was last recorded on the Daito Islands during 1936. Although certainly extinct on Okinawa where it was last seen in 1904, the species may possibly cling to existence […]
Rodrigues Starling (Necropsar rodericanus)
The story The skeletal remains of a starling were found on the island of Rodrigues during the 1870’s. Although there may be no connection, these bones have been associated with a brief account in the document known as the Relation de l’Ile Rodrigue, which was probably written by a marooned sailor named Tafforet during 1725. […]
Rodrigues Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria)
The story The island of Rodrigues, far out in the Indian Ocean, is one of the Mascarene group and here a dodo-like species evolved from an ancestral pigeon stock. This species has become known as the Rodrigues Solitaire. The Huguenot refugee Francois Leguat, whose name occurs so regularly in the stories of extinct birds, took […]
Rodrigues Pigeon (Alectroenas rodericana)
The story This species is known from bones discovered on Rodrigues during the 1870’s and described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, the celebrated expert on fossil birds at the Paris museum. Milne-Edwards described the species primarily on the evidence of a sternum, and chose to assign it to the genus Columba, whereas later researchers have shown an […]
Piopio (Turnagra capensis)
The story The Piopio, or New Zealand Thrush, may have been two species rather than one. Two quite distinct kinds existed, and they are usually regarded as races of the same species: nominate capensis of the South Island; and race tanagra of the North Island. There are good reasons for supposing that they should be […]
Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)
The story The celebrated Passenger Pigeon has, perhaps, the most extraordinary story of any extinct bird. It may once have been the most numerous bird on Earth, and at the start of the nineteenth century vast flocks of this species blackened American skies. Yet during the course of 100 years the tremendous numbers dwindled until […]