Passenger Pigeon

"The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced."  Report of a select committee of the Ohio Senate in 1857 on a bill proposed to protect Passenger Pigeons.  One of the most noted of extinct animals, passenger pigeons were reduced from numbers in the hundreds of millions for food.

The Extinct Passenger Pigeon Gallery

Carolina Parakeet, Chester A Reed

Once abundant the beautifully colored Carolina Parakeets nested in tree hollows in large colonies in the cypress swamps in the South Atlantic and Gulf States. They were hunted for their feathers and slaughtered as pests in orchards. The Parakeets became rare by the 1880s. Incas, a Carolina Parakeet in the Cincinnati Zoo died in 1918. The last reported sighting in the wild was a small flock Florida in 1920. It was declared extinct by the American Ornithologists Union in 1939.

 

The Extinct Carolina Parakeet Gallery

Guadalupe Caracara, Alfred Edmund Brehm

As with many recently extinct animals, this species was brought to extinction when collectors, including museums, sought rare specimens after hunters reduced their numbers on the island of Guadalupe, their only home.

Heath Hen, Chester A. Reed

The Heath Hen was established as distinct from its relative, the Prairie Chicken in 1885.  Correllus State Forest on Martha's Vineyard was created in 1908 as a Heath Hen Reserve to prevent the bird's extinction.  The last Heath Hen was sighted in 1932 shortly after a grassland fire.

 

Spectacled Cormorant, Pallas' Cormorant

Discovered in the Aleutian Islands by George Steller while exploring with Vitus Bering in 1741.  The Spectacled Cormorant was extinct within about a century.