The story This is another of those species known today only from a painting by Georg Forster. This painting, now in the Forster portfolio at the Natural History Museum, London, was produced on 1st June 1774 at Raiatea in the South Pacific, and according to an inscription it shows a female. Although no actual specimen […]
Category: extinct
Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius)
The story The Labrador Duck is one of the most mysterious of North American birds. It was always uncommon, shy and wary and for these reasons seems to have been little affected by shooting. Reasons for its extinction are unknown but one school of thought suggests that it was a very specialized feeder unable to […]
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 […]
Leguats Rail (Aphanapteryx leguati)
The story The Huguenot refugee Francois Leguat discovered a relative of the Mauritian Red Rail during his two-year sojourn on the island of Rodrigues: Our Wood-hens are fat all the year round and of a most delicate taste. Their colour is always of a bright grey, and there is very little difference in the plumage […]
Black Mamo (Drepanis funerea)
The story A bird very closely related to the Hawaii Mamo once lived on the island of Molokai. Here it was discovered by R. C. L. Perkins at an altitude of 1525 metres during June 1893. What is known of the species comes largely from Perkins’s account. Individuals were only ever seen low down in […]
Laysan Crake (Porzana palmeri)
The story Laysan is a tiny coral island around 1280 km to the north-east of Hawaii, and one of its few inhabitants was a small species of rail. Because it is so remote, the island was infrequently visited but, nevertheless, there are several good accounts of the bird in life. These consistently tell of how […]
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, […]
Tahiti Rail (Gallirallus pacificus)
The story The Tahitian Red-billed or Tahiti Rail is known only from a painting that survives today in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London. This painting was produced by Georg Forster, one of the naturalists who sailed with Captain James Cook on his second epic voyage around the world during the 1770’s. Forster’s […]
Braces Emerald (Chlorostilbon bracei)
The story Although there is indeed fairly general acceptance of Brace’s Emerald as a valid species, the same doubts hang about it as in the aforementioned cases, and the present author considers it to be a rather poorly established species. However, a number of hummingbird experts have spoken in its favour and in line with […]
Liverpool Pigeon (Caloenas maculata)
The story Two hundred years ago there were two specimens of this species in existence. Now there is just one. No-one knows where it came from or when it was collected, although this was certainly at some time during the last half of the eighteenth century. The specimen is now in the collection of the […]