10,000 Birds
JUNE 8, 2011
If studying insects would lead you to suppose that God had an “an inordinate fondness for beetles&# , studying the pre-human avifauna of the Pacific would lead you to conclude that God was also quite partial to rails. The fossil record of the islands don’t show the Buff-banded Rail appearing until after humans arrived.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 11, 2014
When humans arrived, with the entourage of camp followers that always follows humans, giving up the anti-predator behavious and, well, you can guess what happened next. In a few places mammals and humans may endure, but even there, rails will become island species, albeit ones that retain some anti-predator strategies.
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10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 14, 2015
I remember looking at a single skin of a Long-legged warbler from Fiji, the only known specimen or record of its particular subspecies, the sum total of all knowledge about its kind. This collection isn’t some ghastly memorial or symbol of human stupidity. New Zealand Bitterns. Bush Wrens.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 7, 2014
In fact, the Dodo belonged to a clade (sometimes called Raphini) of 15 remarkable, bizarre, intriguing island-adapted pigeons, some of which are still alive today, but eight of which have been hacked from the tree of life, driven to extinction by humans. The painting above is by 17th-century Flemish artist Roelant Savery.
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