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Carolina Parakeet, Gustav Mutzel
Once abundant, this extinct species nested in large
colonies in the cypress swamps in the South Atlantic and Gulf States. They migrated
up the Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers to the Platte and regularly to Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska, and in the east to Pennsylvania. Hunted for
their feathers and slaughtered as pests, the last reported sighting in the wild was a
small flock in Florida in 1920.
The Extinct
Carolina Parakeet Gallery
Bachman's Warbler, Louis Agassiz
Fuertes
Male: left, Female: right
A recently extinct species,
Bachman's Warblers nested in the underbrush of forested swamps in the region bounded by
Louisiana up to Kentucky and Maryland, and over to the Carolinas and Georgia, migrating to
Cuba in winters. None have been seen since the early 1960s in North America and they were
listed as endangered in 1967.
Dodo, Roland Savery
In 1505, Portuguese explorers
discovered the island of Mauritius and the 50 lb flightless Dodos which
supplemented their food stores. Imported pigs, monkeys and rats fed on
the Dodo Bird's eggs in their ground nests. The last Dodo was killed in 1681.
The Extinct Dodo
Gallery
Solitaire
These extinct birds once lived on
the island of Mauritius
Great Auk, Alfred Edmund Brehm
Look familiar? Before similar looking birds
were discovered in the southern hemisphere, the Great Auk or Garefowl was also known as a
Penguin. The Great Auk inhabited the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic from
Virginia and Ireland to Greenland and Iceland almost to the Arctic Circle. The
flightless bird was easily captured. They and their eggs fed many sailors.
Shorebirds that breed in a limited number of colonies at only certain locations are highly
susceptible to concentrated stresses and the Great Auk was extinct by mid Nineteenth
Century.
The Extinct Great
Auk
Gallery
Labrador Duck, Elliott Coues
Egg gatherers raiding the Labrador Duck's nest colonies on
the coasts of Quebec and Labrador probably diminished their numbers to a point where the
species could not overcome additional stresses and they became extinct by the late 1870s.
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