Extinct Birds

"Extinct Birds" is a kind of encyclopaedia about all or most birds known to have gone extinct for the past 400 years. It's lavishly illustrated, with reproductions of paintings or illustrations from old books on natural history. Some of the paintings turn out to be made by Errol Fuller himself! The birds come in systematic order. All the well known cases of extinction are covered: dodo, passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, the great moa birds, the ivory billed woodpecker, the great auk... A few extinct races are also covered, including the Tasmanian emu. The most intriguing chapter deals with "mystery birds". The author reaches the conclusion that the white dodo of Réunion never actually existed, except in the imagination of European Baroque painters! There are also some illustrations of "lost" birds of paradise. The book is an excellent addition to any coffee table. You might also consider it as a birthday or Christmas gift. At the same time, it feels very tragic. Once gone, an extinct bird will never come back. Even apart from the fact that it takes longer for Mother Nature to evolve them, than it takes for us to exterminate them...

This is a marvellous collector's book and fit for any coffee table. Lavishly illustrated, well bound with detailed and often poignant descriptions. It is also reasonably scholarly with lot of quotes and references to follow up leads. Each bird is given a separate "portrait" and chapter.I think the second edition has not evolved too much from the first. Pehaps a few maps and a greater sense of urgency in an overview chapter could have made this book more than just a collector's book. It could have lists of organisations you can join to help prevent extinctions and notes about endemic bird areas - in the style of Roger and Petersen.This remains an important reference though its traditional format has obviously not helped sales as I got mine for a fraction of the published cost.

The two most basic and obvious descriptions of this book only highlights the poignancy of the subject of EXTINCT BIRDS. To say that the book is large (nearly 400 pages) implies that there are a lot of birds that are no longer with us. Telling you it's beautifully illustrated (which it is, with nearly every page including a painting, photograph, or sketch, many in full color) only shows that we've lost a wide variety of colorful species. The book is also thoroughly researched and well organized with a logical arrangement of the birds in their main groupings.In the introduction Fuller mentions Jerdon's Courser and the Four-colored flowerpecker, two species previously thought extinct (the flowerpecker since 1900). Both have since been rediscovered. This illustrates one of the dramatic changes in recent times with regard to the whole subject of extinction. Rediscovery is news and extinction is big business. It long ago shrugged off it's dry and dusty, stuffed-exhibits-in-a-museum image, and is now firmly embedded in popular culture and is the subject of bestsellers and box-office hits. This is especially true for birds and dinosaurs. Fuller says as much and gives a nod to the huge role JURASSIC PARK played in this. The story of the Coelacanth is even more remarkable than the rediscovery, after 100 years, of a small flowerpecking bird in a stand of forests on the Phillipine island of Cebu. Nonetheless we'll probably have a long wait before we see a prehistoric fish starring in a movie. The Coelacanth does have its own book though. Its rediscovery in 1938 after being gone for 400 million years is the subject of Samantha Weinberg's A FISH CAUGHT IN TIME. Fuller acknowledges another recent trend which is heightening interest in extinction - the recent scientific work using DNA technology - and its hint that we may be able to restore species in the not too distant future.As part of useful background information Fuller talks about the special role of islands in the extinction process. There is much that is known about the peculiar sensitivity of these ecosystems. There is a correlation between islands and high rates of extinct, and threatened but still extant, bird species. Fuller makes referrence to David Quammen's appropriately titled book THE SONG OF THE DODO which explores the whole subject of island biogeography. Small fragile ecosystems, loss of habitat (especially forest cover), the impact of agriculture and other man-made environments, introduced species and competition; all of these are subjects scientists are very familiar with and whose impact on bird extinction has been studied.Where the recent popular interest in extinction becomes slightly problematic for professionals is that we all want to know what's happening, but quantifying bird extinctions and arriving at loss rates still remains an inexact science. This book covers the 85 bird species that are known to have gone extinct since 1600. There is immediately a problem with this simple state

Like Errol Fuller's previous books, _Extinct Birds_ (Cornell University Press) is big, colorful, and magnificently laid out. Of course it is sad; one cannot look at these pages and read about the birds that we will never see again, without a sense of loss. (However, this second edition has some good news: some of the extinct birds reported in the first edition have been found again!) It's a shame we don't have the birds instead of a commemorative volume about them, but granting even this, _Extinct Birds_ is as beautiful a commemorative volume as we can ever expect to see. It may be that some of these birds are not extinct, only hiding (Fuller shows this has happened before), but most of the birds here are certainly as dead as dodoes. The reasons are not hard to seek, and it will come as no surprise that humans have killed most of them off. Hunting has taken a direct toll, but is not a usual major cause of wiping out a whole species. Ruination of habitats and introduction of predators (especially rats) to islands are more devastating. Predicting how it will go for birds over the next century can't be done exactly, of course, but it doesn't look good for them; one respected research study concludes that one in eight bird species are at risk for extinction in the next century. Watch the birds around you carefully, and count your blessings, and say goodbye._Extinct Birds_ is not a dry catalogue ticking off each species we have lost. Besides the lovely illustrations, Fuller has written about the birds with a dry wit not found in a mere catalogue. Fuller writes, "...extinct birds are, by and large, a quite spectacular bunch. Although there are some fairly unexceptional exceptions among the ranks of the extinct, not a few of the world's most memorable birds are now among the lost. The dodo, the great auk, the moas, and the great elephant birds are all obvious qualifiers. Are there any conclusions to be drawn from this? Perhaps only the notion that a raised head is more likely to be chopped off!" The lovely pictures in this volume, often from sources that could draw the bird from life, come from Audubon, of course, from Edward Lear, who is now more famous for his nonsense verse, and from Fuller and some of his friends.Some of the stories behind the birds are decidedly odd. The funniest and saddest of the stories is that of the Stephen Island wren. Stephen Island is a square mile rocky place near New Zealand. There was a lighthouse on the island, and the lighthouse keeper had a cat named Tibbles. As cats are wont to do, Tibbles would go hunting, and would bring his dead prey back to his human. Tibbles brought the tiny birds to the keeper in around 1896 and thus can be credited with finding a bird that no one had previously recorded. He can also be credited with wiping out the entire species. The specimens he collected are in various museums. Fuller quotes an anonymous correspondent to _The Canterbury Press_ at the time: "And we cer

Extinct Birds is a very important, not to mention facinating, book. If it were required reading in all schools, I think that today's extinction/ecological problems would have a powerful foe. Order this book, you won't regret it.