Armchair Wilderness Women
Book Reports
A Vanishing Thunder: Extinct and Threatened American Birds
While cleaning out my house prepatory to moving, I came across this hardcover book from 1967. It made for rather sad reading. It�s a book intended for a juvenile audience, but some of the descriptive passages are rather effective - especially one in which she describes the murder of the last two great auk in the world.
After reading the book I was curious to see what, if anything had changed in 35 years, so I checked out various webpages. If you�re interested in seeing them, I�ve listed them after the comments on the info provided in the book itself.
1. Passenger Pigeon
Chapter 1 deals with the Passenger Pigeon, sacred to the Indians as the Hopah, destroyed in the thousands at a time by white hunters, lumberjacks, etc. with the last known one dying in captivity in September, 1914.
http://www.ris.net/~tony/ppigeon.html (most of its info seems to come from A Vanishing Thunder (phraseology is the same!) but it has a few URLs to other sites and a color painting of what the pigeons looked like.
Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Chapter 2 tells of the disappearance of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, not so much by systematic extermination of the bird but of its habitat, since it ate only wormlike larvae hatched from eggs of woos-boring insects, which were found mostly in dead and dying trees.
http://www.neotropicalbirdclub.org/feature/ivory.html - tells of the finding of ivory-billed woodpeckers in 1986 in Brazil - and that they were extinct there by 1990 despite efforts to protect them. Other info about the search for these woodpeckers at: http://www.birdingamerica.com/Ivorybill/ivorybilledwoodpecker.htm
Carolina parakeet
The chapter then tells of the systematic extermination of the Carolina parakeet, with the last known wild band of birds seen in April 1904.
The Carolina parakeet info is at http://www.nature.ca/notebooks/english/caropara.htm Seems to resonate with the plan to poison all the blackbirds that feed on sunflower seeds in another couple of years!!!!!!!!!!!
4. The Great Auk
�It is not always easy to know the exact date when the last of certain wild bird or animal species disappears forever, or even to be sure they are truly gone��But one thing is known, and that is the exact day and almost the hour when what was apparently the very last of the strange birds called the Great Auks were killed by men, never to be seen on this earth again.� It�s a sad tale. The Great Auks too are hunted to extinction by men, with, at the very last, museums willing to pay thousands of dollars for the carcasses of these reduced-to-rare (not so much because they want them dead as because they want them stuffed for their museums). So a few hunters went out to an island called Eldey, on the coast of Iceland, on June 3, 1844, and were lucky enough to find the last two great auks, with an egg. Instead of doing their utmost to capture these admittedly large and unwieldy birds so that they could breed and produce more valuable bodies to sell, the hunters clubbed them to death. (The great auk, or garefowl, was the only non-flying bird of the North Atlantic, and was the original 'penguin).
A site advertising a new monograph - color paintings of the bird, a little bit of info at http://www.hoppa.demon.co.uk/
5. California Condors
The California Condor, or Indian Thunderbird, 14 feet from wing tip to wing-tip, also known as a turkey vulture, was put under protection in California in the 1880s. �Very few people paid attention to the law.� The National Audobon Society was formed in 1901. In 1967, there were sightings of only 38 California Condors.
In 1987, the last wild condors were captured to ensure their safety and to serve as parents in captive breeding programs at the Los Angeles Zoo and The San Diego Wild Animal Park. In 1994, The Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey was added as a third location for the breeding program. The first successful breeding of captive condors was accomplished in 1988. As more and more pairs reproduced successfully, the condor population has grown to over 150 today. http://www.peregrinefund.org/conserv_cacondor.html
6. The American egret was threatened, but now (in 1967) was making a comeback. (Poor editing on someone�s part, with the tale of the egret in the middle of the condor story!).
Great american white egret at http://employeeweb.myxa.com/rrb/Audubon/VolVI/00630.html. Didn�t say anything about it being threatened.
7. Whooping Crane -
http://www.bringbackthecranes.org/
The whooping crane, in 1967, had a refuge at the Aransas National Wildlife refuge (in Texas). In October and November, the whooping cranes would come flying in. The whooping crane population at the end of 1967 came to 38.
8. What other birds were endangered in 1967? The trumpeter swan (with 1000 in existence in 1965), The Trumpeter Swan society has a homepage at http://www.taiga.net/swans/
9. Hawaiian goose, or nene, had 300 birds in 1967, (800 birds claimed on this page http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/a_nene.shtml)
Attwaters Prairie Chicken, in 1995 there were only 158, check out http://www.rice.edu/armadillo/Projects/Ecodillo/Earthfocus/Spring95/prairie.htm
the Florida Everglades kite (which is so foolish as to feed on a single species of snail that lives in fresh water lakes and marshes). A bit of info at pages that were taking too long to load, so check here: http://www.nsis.org/bird/sp/sp-kite.html
A Vanishing Thunder: Extinct and Threatened American Birds
Written by Adrian Stoutenburg
Illustrated by John Schoenherr
The Natural History Press
1967, 125 pages including index
NOTE: The pictures illustrating this site are from the websites linked above.
Table of contents
1. The Passenger Pigeon
2. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the Great Auk
3. The California Condor and the American Egret
4. The Whooping Crane
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