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Title: Extinct birds keep turning up again 絕後可逢生? Post by 深藍 Owen on May 13th, 2005, 12:19pm Recent sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a breed long thought lost, remind us that extinction is not always a certainty. Related Topics Environment THE NEWS that the ivory-billed woodpecker — a bird thought to be as dead as the Proverbial Dodo — has been rediscovered, came as a welcome surprise to birdwatchers the world over. But many also wondered how a bird the size of a crow, with a call like a pack of hyenas, could have avoided detection for so long — even in the backwoods of Arkansas. Phoenix-like reappearances, long after a species is supposed to be extinct, are more frequent than you might think. In 1948, explorers in a remote valley of the south island of New Zealand came across the takahe, a giant version of the familiar moorhen, more than 50 years after any previous sighting. In the mid-1980s, ornithologists in India found Jerdon's courser, a nocturnal wading bird that had not been seen since the dawn of the 20th century. The quick-thinking finders dazzled their quarry with a flashlight, enabling them to pick it up by hand. Ten years later, an expedition to the Indonesian island of Halmahera rediscovered the aptly named invisible rail, another species supposedly lost forever. It's not just birds, as this week's unveiling of the rediscovered Jurassic-era Wollemi pine at Kew Gardens in London shows. And, remarkable as these finds are, they pale into insignificance compared to the granddaddy of all missing creatures, the coelacanth, discovered in a South African fishing catch in 1938. At the time, this prehistoric monster had been considered extinct for at least 65 million years, making the ivory-billed woodpecker's rediscovery after a couple of decades look pretty insignificant by comparison. But what other birds, presumed lost forever, might be out there, just waiting for some fortunate person to stumble across them? As well as the ivory-billed woodpecker, two other North American birds — Carolina parakeet and Bachman's warbler — have died out within living memory. The parakeet, North America's only native parrot, is surely gone forever. But it is just possible that Bachman's warbler might still survive, somewhere in the fetid swamps of South Carolina, where the last recorded individual was found singing forlornly to himself in 1962. A year later, another rapidly declining North American species, the Eskimo curlew, was seen in Texas. In the four decades since, several other sightings have been claimed, but none has totally convinced the authorities whose job it is to pass judgment on records of rare birds. With any species like these, on the brink of annihilation, there is a point at which we must finally admit that it has become extinct. Yet, it is human nature to hang on to the slim hope that a lost population may somehow, somewhere, survive. So perhaps even now a flock of Eskimo curlews is migrating unseen across the crowded North American airspace, on the epic journey from their South American winter quarters to breed in the wilds of Alaska. With the resurrection of the ivory-billed woodpecker, this may not be quite as farfetched as it seems. A close relative of the Eskimo curlew is now considered to be Europe's rarest bird. Once common, the slender-billed curlew underwent a rapid decline during the 20th century, and by the 1990s could only reliably be seen at a single site in northern Morocco. Gradually numbers there fell, until finally none remained. But in May 1998, in a remarkable turn of events, a small curlew resembling this species was found at Druridge Bay in Northumberland, England. Though photographed and even captured briefly on video, the identification was doubted by some sceptics, who simply could not believe that such a rare bird could turn up in Britain. Away from the well-watched regions of Europe and North America, it is much more likely that birds long considered extinct may yet be rediscovered. The last known Spix's macaw disappeared from its native forest in north-eastern Brazil some time towards the end of the last millennium. But some species simply refuse to lie down and die. BirdLife recently revealed a possible sighting of the legendary pink-headed duck, the first since before the Second World War, in the remote region of northern Burma. Frustratingly, the bird was seen for just three minutes; and none of the observers had a camera to hand — making it yet another in the long line of "ones that got away." Which brings us to the $64,000 question. Is there any chance — however remote — that any of the three best known extinct birds in history could still be alive, awaiting rediscovery? In ascending order of notoriety, they are the passenger pigeon, whose flocks once darkened the skies over North America; the great auk, the last British example of which was killed by islanders who thought it was a witch; and finally the dodo, which fell victim to hungry sailors and the even hungrier dogs, cats and rats they brought with them. Were any of these birds to be found again, it would be front-page news all over the world. Sadly, there is about as much chance of this happening as of Elvis being found alive. But then again, we can always dream ... - Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 (c) 2005 Kasturi & Sons Ltd |
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