Top 15 Extinct Birds: Unveiling Their Fascinating and Tragic Histories

The history of our world is recorded in the traces and memories of the animals that once existed. Some of the most fascinating chapters are those of the birds--flying beauties that flew through the skies of antiquity, that waddled over undiscovered islands, and were the singers of the world, whom we can only conceive to-day. Their narratives are not merely the tales of loss; it is a deep lesson about the evolution, adapting and the fine balance of nature.

The histories of these extinct birds are as interesting as they are heartbreaking, whether it is the legendary Dodo, or the hideous Elephant Bird. And we will now take a time trip to meet 15 of the most incredible birds we as the human race will never see again.

1. The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus)

The Poster Child of Extinction

The Dodo cannot be mentioned in any list of extinct birds. This giant pigeon was flightless and endemic to Mauritius, which is an island paradise, and has no natural predators. The Dodo evolved in solitude, and lost the skill of flight, being a trusting, ground-foraging bird.

Interesting History: The sad story of the Dodo is connected with the epoch of exploration. In the late 16th century Dutch sailors discovered the clumsy, fearless birds as an easy source of fresh meat. But the actual death-knell was not merely hunting, but the rats, pigs, dogs, and cats, which came with the ships, that ate the ground-laid eggs and the nests of the Dodo. After less than 100 years since its discovery, the Dodo had disappeared and became an eloquent illustration of human-caused extinction.

2. The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

A Flock That Blotted Out the Sun

One of the most astounding natural history stories is that of the Passenger Pigeon. It was at one time the most plentiful bird on the North American continent, and the flocks of them were so large that they darkened the sky days and days, when they flew overhead, being in the billions.

Interesting History: How would an animal with so many die out? The solution is in commercial hunting and loss of habitat. As railroads and telegraph lines were expanded, large flocks were easily found by the hunters, and their carcasses were easily transported by the train to supply growing cities. The last survivor was a female (named Martha) who was killed in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Her extinction marked the cessation of a race which seemed unsaturable.

3. The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis)

The Original Penguin

The Great Auk, a late, black-and-white, flightless bird of the North Atlantic, was an excellent swimmer, and as it swam in the water it fluttered its wings to move through it like a fly. It is similar to penguins, which is a typical example of convergent evolution (they formed no relationship).

Interesting History: Throughout the centuries, the Great Auk was preyed upon by the coastal people due to its meat, eggs, and down. Iceland gave it as its last refuge on a remote island. The final chapter is most disastrously bleak: in 1844 three sailors discovered the final breeding pair on Eldey Island, slaughtered them as specimens and destroyed their one and only egg. The species was wiped out in one, bloody, stroke.

4. The Moa (Dinornithiformes)

Giants of New Zealand

The Moa had been a family of nine species of flyingless giant birds that dominated the New Zealand forests. The tallest, the South Island Giant Moa, was between 12 feet high and more than 500 pounds--dinosaur-like to the last.

Interesting History: The Moa lived for thousands of years since there were no predators of their species (mammals). When the Maori people came into the world in the 13 th century, theirs changed. These huge slow breeding birds were easy targets and a source of food. All Moa species, and their solitary predator, the huge Haast Eagle were killed off within a hundred years of human occupation.

5. The Elephant Bird (Aepyornithidae)

The Largest Bird To Ever Live

The Elephant Bird is a Madagascar bird that boasts of being the largest bird that ever existed. It was over 10 feet tall and weighed almost 1,600 pounds, with eggs that were the largest single cells in history--more than 100 times larger than a chicken egg.

Interesting History: As with the Moa, the extinction of the Elephant Bird is also related to the arrival of humans. As humans colonized Madagascar, they probably hunted the adult birds and consumed their huge eggs as food. Their death was also caused by habitat burning and climate change and they died by the 17 th century or even earlier. They may even be the antecedents of the mythical Roc of the Arabian stories.

6. The Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)

America's Only Native Parrot

This conspicuous-coloured parrot, with its green body, yellow head and orange face, once frequented the trees of the eastern United States, extending all the way northward as far as New York.

Interesting History: The extinction of the Carolina Parakeet was a death by a thousand cuts. They became crop pests to farmers who would shoot them in large numbers. Their bright plumes were valued as ladies hats. Their nesting places were destroyed by deforestation. Lastly, they were extremely prone to poultry diseases. The last known wild bird was shot in 1904, and the last known captive, Incas, in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918--in the same cage where Martha the Passenger Pigeon had been killed four years before.

7. The Tasmanian Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis)

The Island Subspecies

Another subspecies of the mainland Australian Emu, the Tasmanian Emu, was smaller, and lived on grasslands in Tasmania.

Fascinating History: Its extinction story is a fast and straight forward outcome of Human habitation. As European settlers constructed farms and grazing fields in Tasmania, they declared war on emus which ate their crops. The extermination of the whole subspecies by a series of hunting and burning, together with conversion of the habitat, was done in a very short time--within less than 30 years of earnest persecution since 1830s.

8. The Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius)

A Mystery of the Sea

Even before the Europeans settled in North America, this spectacular black and white duck was never widespread in the sea. The fact that it went extinct in the late 19th century is yet to be solved.

Interesting History: The final Labrador Duck was spotted in 1878. It became extinct, why, is unknown. It was not hunted hard. Its small mollusks diet indicates that it might have been very specialized and a shrinking of its particular food source (such as coastal development or pollution) could have been its killer. Its tale is a caution that we will probably never know how much of an intricate web of ecology we have broken.

9. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)

The Lord God Bird

The Ivory-bill was the largest woodpecker in North America, a magnificent bird native to the old-growth bottomlands of the southeast US and Cuba. It had the nickname of The Lord God Bird due to the reaction that people used to express when they viewed its remarkable size.

Fascinating History: The death of the Ivory-bill is a conventional story of the destruction of habitats. The massive destruction of its primeval forest habitat over the 19 th and early 20 th centuries had no place to go. Although legally declared as a critically endangered species, possibly becoming extinct, unconfirmed sightings still keep the hope and debate going, so it remains a ghost of the southern swamps and symbol of lost wilderness.

10. The Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris)

A Symbol of Māori Reverence

The Huia was a well-known inhabitant of the North Island of New Zealand with its high levels of sexual dimorphism of the beak shape. The beak of the male was short and stout and meant to chisel wood, and of the female long and curvy and fine.

Interesting Past: Huia played a sacred role in Maori culture and the feathers were exclusive to the chiefs of high rank. But even this veneration failed to protect it in the hands of European collectors. Its rare skins and feathers were in demand at museums and fashionable hats in Europe, which resulted in the uncontrolled hunting. This pressure, coupled with habitat loss and foreign predators, became an extinction factor in the early 20th century, leading to the extinction of the Huia.

11. The Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli)

Extinct by a Single Cat?

Only on Stephens Island, New Zealand, did this little, wingless wren survive. It was very extraordinary and was the only known flightless songbird in the world.

Fascinating History: Its story is a well-known though tragic tale of the devastating effect of invasive species. The cat belonging to the lighthouse keeper known as Tibbles is infamously said to have brought the species to extinction on his own (or one paw) by 1895. Although it is probably that a population of feral cats was the cause of the entire event, the story is very eloquent in showing how delicate island ecosystems are.

12. The Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido)

A Conservation Effort Gone Awry

The Greater Prairie-Chicken has a subspecies, the Heath Hen which was once widespread in the scrublands of the northeastern United States.

Interesting History: Towards the end of the 19 th century, it was hunted and lost its habitat and was left with only one population on the Martha Vineyard. In 1908 a special sanctuary was created and the population started to recover. Then calamity befell: a fire swept over the breeding grounds, a severe winter intervened, and they were destroyed by a flood of predatory goshawks and disease (which was probably caused by domesticated poultry). The final heath hen was a man known as Booming Ben who passed away in 1932.

13. The Laughing Owl (Sceloglaux albifacies)

The Owl with a Uniquely Eerie Call

The Laughing Owl is native to New Zealand and it is named so due to its bizarre vocalizations that resembled a series of strange shrieks and chatters as given by settlers as a series of dismal shrieks and chatters that were repeated severally.

Interesting History: Its lizard, insect and small bird diet was also broken by the introduction of European rats and mice that may have competed with its natural food. It also must have been an easy prey to introduced cats and stoats. Its weird laugh was never heard again, the last witness having been discovered dead in the South Island in 1914.

14. The Réunion Solitaire (Threskiornis solitarius)

The Dodo's Misplaced Cousin

This bird was originally found in the Indian Ocean on the Reunion Island and was long believed to be a white relative of the Dodo by the early accounts of travelers.

Interesting Facts: Since it was found as fossils later, it was not a dodo as they are commonly known, but rather a variant of ibis, only this one had lost the ability to fly. Its history is similar to other island birds: the coming of human being and the invasive species went with him resulted in its quick extinction at the beginning of the 18th century. It is a lesson in the way that understanding in science can develop even when the species are dead.

15. The Canary Islands Oystercatcher (Haematopus meadewaldoi)

A Recent and Preventable Loss

This endemic eastern Canary Island bird was pronounced extinct as late as 1994 and therefore its tale is one of the most recent and heartbreaking.

Interesting History: The population was never large and was confined thus being extremely vulnerable. Human over-harvesting its intertidal mollusk prey, tourism and development disturbance and predation by introduced rats and cats were the main causes of its extinction. Its extinction demonstrates the fact that the extinctions are not a thing of the past; it is a tragedy that continues to happen.

A Legacy That Demands Action

The adventures of these 15 birds are not only a good story of unusual history, but they are also a warning. They educate us on the amazing variety of life that can be created in a remote ecosystem by evolution, particularly in the isolated ecosystems. More to the point, though, they are powerful demonstrations of the destructive power of human action - hunting, destruction of habitats, introduction of invasive species.

We should not give up at these extinction stories but be determined. They bolster the efforts of contemporary conservationists who put in exhausting efforts to preserve endangered species such as the Kakapo, the California Condor and the Spix Macaw. When we recall the birds we have lost we re-promise to do all we can to save those we still have, so that the skies, forests and islands of our world will continue to be wonder-filled to future generations.