Disappointment after rare feathers stolen

A volunteer at the small museum where two valuable rare feathers from an extinct native bird were stolen is not hopeful they will be returned.

The 123-year-old tail feathers were taken from one of two stuffed huia birds that were kept in a secure glass case at the Gallery of History in Dannevirke.

Dannevirke police are investigating and are appealing to the public for any information about the theft, which is believed to have occurred on either Wednesday or Friday last week.

Pat Mills, who is one of a number of volunteers at the museum, told NZ Newswire she doesn't hold much hope the feathers will be returned.

"It's going to be very difficult to find out who took them."

She said there will be an amnesty, so if the person who took them felt that they had done the wrong thing, they could slip them under the gallery door and nothing more would be said.

"But I don't know if that will happen," Mrs Mills said.

The museum has been looking after the two huia for a local family for 25 years.

Mrs Mills says the huia were shot in the nearby Pohangina Valley in 1889 for a wedding present.

The museum is disappointed the feathers have been stolen and Mrs Mills says the theft has deprived future generations the chance to see what an authentic huia looked like.

The last live huia was seen in the Tararua Ranges in 1907.

A feather, similar to the ones stolen, was sold at auction in Auckland in 2010 for $8400.

It was said at the time to be a world record price for a bird feather.

http://news.msn.co.nz/nationalnews/8442150/rare-huia-feathers-stolen-from-museum

An Extinct Species of Scops Owl Has Been Discovered in Madeira

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2012) — An international team of scientists, including some from Majorca and the Canary Islands, have described a new type of fossil scops owl, the first extinct bird on the archipelago of Madeira (Portugal). Otus mauli, which was also the first nocturnal bird of prey described in the area, lived on land and became extinct as a result of humans arriving on the island. 

Twenty years ago, the German researcher Harald Pieper discovered fossil remains of a small nocturnal bird of prey in Madeira, which, until now, had not been studied in depth. The international team of palaeontologists has shown that the remains belong to a previously unknown extinct species of scops owl, which they have called Otus mauli.

"It has long legs and wings slightly shorter than the continental European scops owl from which it derives" Josep Antoni Alcover, one of the authors of the study and researcher at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), a mixed centre of the university of the Balearic Islands and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), said.

The result of the analysis of the proportions of the remains found, which has been published in the journal Zootaxa, reveals that Otus mauli could be a land inhabiting species that ate invertebrates and "occasionally lizards or birds."

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120323134533.htm

Artwork brings rare birdsong into heart of city

Former Rotorua resident and artist Adrienne Grant has created an art installation which allows people to hear the birdsong of the region before human settlement.

Titled Korokoro Manu (the throat of the bird), the series of sound boxes and drawings are dotted throughout the central city and feature the calls of rare, extinct and endangered native birds such as kiwi, kakapo and kokako.

Situated at 10 locations throughout the city, the sound boxes are activated automatically as a person walks. There are nine different native bird calls, plus a recording of the dawn chorus that can be heard on Mokoia Island, a bird sanctuary.

Ms Grant, who lives in Hamilton, said the aim of the project was to give the public an unexpected encounter and also features stencils of native birds, spray painted throughout the central city. She said the installation was special to her, as she had a rare recording of a person imitating a huia - a bird which became extinct in 1907.

"Unfortunately, the call of the huia is something we will never experience but the recording of Henare Haumana brings us closer to this enigmatic bird."
Former Rotorua resident and artist Adrienne Grant has created an art installation which allows people to hear the birdsong of the region before human settlement.

Also special was the recording of the Mokoia Island dawn chorus, she said. She was given special permission from island trustees to stay overnight and record it.

Ms Grant said she hoped the installation would be "an unexpected encounter" for people.

A small brochure that describes the project and has a map of the sound boxes will be available from shops, Rotorua District Library and cafes.

Korokoro Manu is part of Sustainable Backyards Month organised by the Hannahs Bay Community Restoration Trust.

Organiser Melanie Allcutt said the month aimed to raise awareness of effective sustainability actions people could take part in every day.

The concept of a backyard was used in its widest sense, Ms Allcutt said. It could be where a person lived, their neighbourhood, town or New Zealand.

Sustainability, Ms Allcutt said, was about taking responsibility for the resources and energy people used and finding ways of limiting the adverse impact on their environment, balancing that with a good standard of living.

Sustainability Backyard Month runs until April 1. A sustainable backyard is a backyard that produces most of its own food for the year for the family.

For details call Denise La Grouw on 027 321-9333 or visit www.communityrestorationtrust.com 

http://www.rotoruadailypost.co.nz/news/artwork-brings-rare-birdsong-into-heart-of-city/1305052/ 

Angry birds? These lost species have every right to be…

Human greed and thoughtlessness are responsible for the loss of hundreds of species that could have been saved, and the extinction rate is increasing alarmingly. Here are some we have already lost for ever.
John Vidal
The Observer,  19th February 2012

The Laysan crake stood six inches tall, had a yellow bill and black legs, and its cry, said one ornithologist, was "like pebbles ricocheting on a glass roof". In the 1890s there were around 2,000 of these friendly but flightless birds alive on Laysan, a tiny Pacific coral island.

Fifty years later there were none, and the bird, which ran like a chicken and was so unafraid of humans it would crawl up trouser legs, has disappeared for ever – a sad chapter in the dismal history of modern bird extinctions.

Like so many other bird species, it was made extinct not because it was wanted for its meat or feathers, or because of climate change or even a rare disease, but thanks to sheer human thoughtlessness.

First, a US businessman set up a guano-collecting station on Laysan and introduced rabbits. But the rabbits escaped and bred, eating most of the vegetation on which the bird depended. Then, in 1942, rats escaped off a US landing craft and thrived by smashing and eating its eggs. Three years later the Laysan crake was to be found only in a few museums, and immortalised on a grainy black and white BBC film.

The Laysan crake is one of around 1,000 bird species known by exhibits, written accounts, illustrations, skeletons, eggs or subfossil remains to have existed but which have vanished in the last 700 years. It joins the dodo, the great auk, the huia and species of woodpeckers, boobies, pigeons, parakeets, cormorants, owls, swifts, finches, crows, petrels and birds of almost every taxon in a remarkable new book that documents for the first time the world's known extinct birds.

Read on:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/19/extinct-birds-hume-walters?newsfeed=true

Imperial Woodpecker found on 1956 film but not on surveys to film location.

The largest woodpecker that ever lived and the closest relative of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker probably went extinct in Mexico in the late 20th century concludes a paper just published in the October 2011 issue of The Auk, the scientific journal of the American Ornithologists’ Union.

It was thought that no photos or film of the two-foot-tall, flamboyantly crested bird existed, until a biologist from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tracked down a 16-mm film shot in 1956 by a dentist from Pennsylvania. The footage captures the last ever confirmed sighting of an Imperial Woodpecker.

The researchers not only restored the film to use it to describe the species’ behavior but also to study the habitat of the woodpecker by tracking down the exact filming location during a 2010 expedition to the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, in Mexico. This ’lost species’ survey, was co-funded by The British Birdwatching Fair – Founding Global Sponsor of the BirdLife Preventing Extinctions Programme. Pronatura (BirdLife in Mexico) helped with the expedition logistics.

“It is stunning to look back through time with this film and see the magnificent Imperial Woodpecker moving through its old-growth forest environment, and it is heartbreaking to know that both the bird and the forest are gone,” said Martjan Lammertink, lead author of the paper.

Read on ...

Winged hope: Auburn professor is confident the magnificent ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct Read more: Anniston Star - Winged hope Auburn professor is confident the magnificent ivory billed woodpecker is not extinct

by John Fleming
Editor-at-large Anniston Star
Mar 13, 2011

AUBURN – Professor Geoff Hill is a careful observer and a careful talker.

He knows what he saw, but he also knows what to say about what he saw.

In 2005 and 2006, deep in the swamps of the Florida Panhandle, he made several sightings of an ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, last proven beyond a doubt to be alive in the 1940s. The professor of ornithology at Auburn and author of several books on birds, an accomplished birder and a man who knows his woodpeckers (one of his books is about the ivory-bill) will tell you in detail about the Holy Grail of the birding world, because he has firsthand knowledge.

But then he will quickly add, “It proves nothing.”

It proves nothing because neither he nor any of the other accomplished members of the research team he led from Auburn University into the Choctawatchee River basin came back with a clear, indisputable photo of the bird. Yes, they have hundreds of recordings of a distinctive call similar to the one an ivory-bill was known to make. And his team, accomplished birders, well-trained graduate students and fellow ornithologists, made at least 14 sightings.

“It doesn’t prove anything.”

Hill, who has recently returned from studying another dying species in New Zealand, has a video clip of what he says is the bird. But before he even speaks about it, he dismisses it as essentially useless.

The clip is fuzzy and short. If you tease the backstory out of him, he’ll add that on the video, his grad student, Brian Rolek, is heard to say, “ivory-bill.”

Geoff Hill is convinced the ivory-bill is not dead. But he’s having a harder time convincing himself that the research has any more life in it.

A fuzzy video image

Proving the existence of the ivory-bill is a big deal for science and the birding world. This, the largest of the woodpeckers, once occupied the forests and swamps of the South, until huge swaths of timber were cleared, destroying the bird’s habitat.

Once a common sight, the ivory-bill faded with the forests of the South, until scientists and birders stopped finding it at all.

Through the years, people have reported sightings. Many of them turned out to be the cousin of the ivory-bill, the much smaller pileated woodpecker. But sprinkled in among the false alarms have been enough credible reports to keep the scientists and the hopeful interested.

The biggest problem is there is no photo. Not since a scientific expedition penetrated a swampy region of Louisiana to film ivory-bills in the 1930s has anyone obtained an undisputed photo of the bird.

Oh, there have been close calls. But these signs of hope have also proven to be letdowns for the general public and for funders of projects like the one Hill led.

First, there was great excitement in Louisiana in the late 1990s, which turned up practically no evidence. Then a video (another inconclusive affair) from Arkansas sent the birding community into euphoria, until some experts began to cast doubt on it.

This is one reason Geoff Hill is so careful. He doesn’t want to build up expectations, but he’s also a scientist. He has respect for the skeptics, even when they heap scorn on him and his dedicated group that braved the flooded river bottoms of northwest Florida.

There is a new documentary, for example, Ghost Bird, that focuses on the Arkansas episode in the ivory-bill chronicles. It does not heap scorn on Hill and the others, but it takes a decidedly skeptical approach to the question.

In the documentary, hope that the woodpecker is still alive and, by extension, hope for the future of wildlife is given a backseat because Hill and others who share his mostly optimistic view were not interviewed.

But “that’s our fault,” said Hill. “The producer didn’t leave us out of that film, we didn’t give him access.” Hill already had an arrangement with another film producer who asked for exclusive access. So he honored that.

That film has not been made and may never be made, said Hill.

He speaks matter-of-factly, but he is not a defeatist. There has, after all, been some action since his expedition was forced to quit the swamp because the funding had come to an end.

He just wants everyone to understand that none of it is conclusive.

“There is that one weird image,” he said, shaking his head while turning to his computer monitor.

The team, he explained, mounted remote cameras in the forest, cameras that took million of images of squirrels, small birds, ducks and woodpeckers that were not ivory-bills.

Out of more than 7 million images, no bird resembling the big woodpecker showed itself. Except for that one image.

“Well, look at it,” Hill said when he brought the image up on his screen. “What is that? I don’t know, could be an ivory-bill, could be a cormorant, could be herons. It’s like an inkblot. It gets us nowhere.”

Deep in the Choctawatchee

Then there is the interesting case of a group that traveled from across the nation to the Choctawatchee at the end of Hill’s research effort in 2008.

Among them was John Agnew, an accomplished wildlife artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. Agnew was in a kayak working along a tributary called Bruce Creek, in the same area where Hill’s group had spent a lot of time and previously spotted the bird.

In his article in Bird Watcher’s Digest, he described what happened to him that cold morning in early 2008:

“About a hundred yards to the west of me, some pileated woodpeckers were making a racket, apparently involved in a territorial dispute. It was then that I saw a large dark woodpecker flying towards me from their direction. It landed on the far side of a cypress about 20 yards away. I thought that I might as well practice my photographic technique on this pileated woodpecker, and was raising the camera (a Nikon D80 with a 300mm lens) to focus when it took off and flew directly towards me. There would not be time to get the camera ready, so I just watched this magnificent bird fly. When it was about 15 feet overhead and nearly at my position, I realized that something was different. My eyes were drawn towards the brilliant white secondary feathers, their edges glowing in the morning sun. My subconscious mind was telling me that this was no pileated, but no alarm bells were ringing. I noted the red crest and a white stripe on the side of the head. The bird flew past me, and by the time I got the kayak turned around, it had gone on downstream. I sat a moment digesting what I had seen.”

The pileated is about the only bird, according to Hill, that you could possibly confuse with the larger ivory-bill. But Agnew went on to say that he is intimately familiar with the pileated woodpecker, and what he saw was not a pileated, but an ivory-bill.

Perhaps most importantly, Agnew noted the white trailing edges of the underwing of the bird, a signature of an ivory-bill.

When he reached his friend Sally Wolliver, who was a short distance away but out of sight down Bruce Creek, he found her “gesturing wildly and mouthing the words, ‘I saw an ivory-bill.’”

Wolliver, a south Florida veteran of many a birding outing, agreed with Agnew that they had almost certainly seen the same bird, and that it was an ivory-bill.

Agnew, the artist, drew his own sketch after the sighting. Wolliver described what she had seen to artist Devere Burt, who was also on the trip and who serves as director emeritus of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History.

“My back was against a cypress tree,” Wolliver said in a recent phone call. “It was early morning, cold but spectacular. Coming toward me on Bruce Creek was what I thought was a pileated woodpecker. But when it turned, I could see how big it was.”

Wolliver described the flying pattern as “zipping,” not undulating or up and down, a description often given to pileated woodpeckers.

“Then,” Wolliver said, just before the bird disappeared out of sight, she saw “a white trailing pattern” on the wing.

Ivory-bills are strong flyers, with rapid wing thrusts, and, again, the underwing and trailing edge of the wing is white.

In his office in Auburn, with books about ivory-bills, sketches of ivory-bills and research about birds all around him, Hill talked about this sighting and the respect he has for both Agnew and Wolliver, and how in all likelihood they saw an ivory-bill, maybe the last one on earth.

“But,” he said, turning his attention back to class preparation, “it doesn’t prove anything.”

http://www.annistonstar.com/view/full_story/12311160/article-Winged-hope--Auburn-professor-is-confident-the-magnificent-ivory-billed--woodpecker-is-not-extinct?instance=home_news

Ancient Jamaican bird used wings to go clubbing (via Dawn Holloway)

An extinct flightless bird from Jamaica fought rivals and predators using wings evolved into clubs, scientists suggest.


The boney bludgeons carried by Xenicibis xympithecus are unlike anything else known in the bird world - or in mammals, reptiles or amphibians.

Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, the scientists report finding bones that had apparently been broken by another bird's club.

The species may have survived until less than 10,000 years ago.

A member of the ibis family, it was probably about the size of a chicken, but with an infinitely more robust armoury.

Fossils show that the metacarpus - one of the "hand" bones - was elongated and much bigger than in related species, with very thick walls.

This allowed the wings to function "in combat as a jointed club or flail", the researchers write.

"We don't really know how they would have used these clubs, but we do know that modern ibises grab each other by the beak and pound away with their wings," said Nicholas Longrich, from Yale University in the US.

"And we analysed two bones that had been broken during fighting, including a humerus (upper arm bone) that had been snapped in half - it had started to re-heal, although the two ends hadn't knitted together," he told BBC News.

Dr Longrich's colleague in this research, Storrs Olson from the Smithsonian Institution, was one of the scientists who first identified Xenicibis xympithecus back in the 1970s.

A number of other birds are known to fight by whacking each other with their wings - including swans, who will also protect their young this way.


Some, including screamers, lapwings and and spur-winged goose, have evolved spurs to increase the damage they can wreak.

The extinct solitaire from the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues - a cousin of the dodo - had bony growths colloquially known as "musketballs" on their wings, which appear to have served the same purpose.

"But among vertebrates - there's no animal of any sort that has anything like a limb modified as a club," noted Dr Longrich.

Julian Hume, an avian palaeontologist with London's Natural History Museum who was not involved in the research, noted that unlike most flightless birds, Xenicibis retained long wings, possibly making its flailing more powerful.

"Ibis young stay in the nest for a relatively long time," he said.

"So if they retained that feature, that suggests they needed it for defence against predators - and there were quite a few on Jamaica."

However, ibises also tend to be intensely territorial, so the flailing clubs may also - or alternatively - have found employment in disputes between individuals, probably with both sexes involved.

By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12115776

'Dodo diary' tells of creature’s life as pet in Oxford

2:10pm Saturday 21st August 2010

By Reg Little

It threatens to be the most explosive ‘lost diary’ find since the supposed discovery of Hitler’s journal sparked a worldwide frenzy 27 years ago.

But this one, snapped up in a city centre Oxfam shop for just 95p, will put to flight everything we have ever believed about the most famous of extinct species — the Dodo.

The diary, written 300 years ago by an Oxford science student, reveals there was a Dodo alive and well in the city during the 17th century.

The tatty and torn little book, that came close to being lost forever, also provides an hilarious account of how this kindly student managed to keep the last Dodo in England as a pet. Keeping it in secrecy, the young scientist faithfully recorded the Dodo’s every move, as well as the reactions of all his friends and acquaintances.

While recognising the bird’s rarity, the student had no idea that his pet might have been the last of its kind to walk upon the earth.

But now the whole remarkable story can be revealed, with the publication of a diary that really must be seen, to be disbelieved.

A Dodo at Oxford: The Unreliable Account of a Student and His Pet Dodo (Oxgarth Press £12.99) goes into the shops later this month.

With serious doubts about its authenticity being raised in literary and scientific circles, the man behind the find declares it will shake the theory of evolution — or at least the sides of his readers.

Michael Johnson, 44, is the co-author of two local guide books, The Heart of Oxford, published in 1999 and The Pocket Guide To Oxford, published earlier this year.

Ten years ago he founded his own publishing company, Oxgarth Press, in Chipping Norton, where he lives with his wife, Jane, and their nine-month-old daughter. But his main employment is as a book designer with the Oxford University Press.

So, he is a man who recognises literary gold when he sees it. He says the book that purports to be a diary of an un-named Oxford student, writing in 1683, re-emerged by complete chance, when he and his late friend Philip Atkins visited a charity shop.

“We came across it whilst browsing in the Oxfam bookshop on St Giles. It claims to be an Oxford student’s observations on what may well have been the last Dodo to have lived. Sensing something special, we promptly bought it for 95p,” he recalls.

That was back in March 2008. The assistant in the shop was able to throw a little light on how the diary ended up in the bargain book box nestled amongst cookery booklets and joke books.

A dirty brown paper package tied up with a bootlace had apparently been dropped off with old books by a man just a few days before. When the wrapping was removed, the little book was revealed. “It was battered, fusty, interleaved with a bizarre mixture of additional items, and without its binding,” says Mr Johnson.

Realising its potential worth, the two men placed tried in vain to find out who had donated the item.

“It is a mystery and a disappointment to us that we have failed to find any record of the diary in either the Bodleian Library in Oxford, or the archives of the Oxford University Press.”

By now Mr Johnson, respected OUP figure that he is, could detect my nervousness about this Dodo scoop of the century.

I pointed out that he was talking to a man who was halfway through a biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper, the great Oxford historian, who had ‘authenticated’ the Hitler diaries and spent the rest of his life regretting it. Even close friends had begun doubting the authenticity of the diary of this mystery student, who inherits a Dodo and keeps it in his rooms, admitted Mr Johnson.

But passing me a copy of A Dodo in Oxford he points to the fact that every page has been photographed and reprinted to enable readers to judge for themselves.

And what’s this on the cover? A glowing endorsement from Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials.

“A masterpiece,” writes the great Oxford author, “full of wit and fantasy”. There is no doubt that, even if you decide to categorise A Dodo at Oxford as another literary hoax, it is altogether funnier, warmer and better written than the ‘diaries’ of Hitler, Mussolini and Jack the Ripper combined.

As you read the photocopied pages, you realise that fake or not, this is a real Oxford book that belongs to the tradition of Alice in Wonderland, with its mad characters, flights of fantasy and, of course, references to a forgotten Oxford.

The diary begins with the student coming to terms with the fact he has inherited a Dodo, following the death of its previous owner, a drunken Dutchman, who drowns in the river near Magdalen Bridge. Thus begins a saga that somehow marries the world of 17th-century science with Monty Python. Being a student of science he is soon undertaking experiments in his rooms, off the High Street.

“Dodo dropp’d like a stone, rebounded from the bed with great force, knocking Mr Tompkyns downe where he stood watching. Neither suffered great hurt, except in dignitie. Demonstration: Dodo lacks natural proclivite for flight.”

The pet Dodo does little to improve relations with his landlord. “Dodo has batter’d a hole through the wall to reach the pigeons and fowles in the next-door room. It would not stopp and was stuck halfway,” records the diary.

The diary entries are annotated by Mr Johnson and Mr Atkins, his co-editor, from Stonesfield, who died from cancer last year, aged 59.

Mr Atkins had formerly worked at the OUP, and the two men produced the guide books together.

Mr Johnson said his friend would never see the book published, but he treasured the fun they had working on their last project together.

“I hope people think that there is a chance that it could be a genuine diary from the 17th century.

“What interested Philip and I was the idea of trying to decide if it is fake. I love the idea of allowing people to form their own views about its authenticity. That is one aspect of the book we wanted to leave slightly open, because it plays a considerable element in the book, and how people read it.”

The pair put considerable effort into studying 17th-century type sizes and there are extensive notes clarifying the language used by the diarist, with explanations of 17th-century life in Oxford covering duelling, apothecaries, pub games and the real-life figures of the day, such as Christopher Wren.

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/headlines/8345408._Dodo_diary__tells_of_creature___s_life_as_pet_in_Oxford/

Megafauna cave painting could be 40,000 years old

Emma Masters
May 31, 2010

Scientists say an Aboriginal rock art depiction of an extinct giant bird could be Australia's oldest painting.

The red ochre painting, which depicts two emu-like birds with their necks outstretched, could date back to the earliest days of settlement on the continent.

It was rediscovered at the centre of the Arnhem Land plateau about two years ago, but archaeologists first visited the site a fortnight ago.

A palaeontologist has confirmed the animals depicted are the megafauna species Genyornis.

Archaeologist Ben Gunn said the giant birds became extinct more than 40,000 years ago.

"The details on this painting indicate that it was done by someone who knew that animal very well," he said.

He says the detail could not have been passed down through oral storytelling.

"If it is a Genyornis, and it certainly does have all the features of one, it would be the oldest dated visual painting that we've got in Australia," he said.

"Either the painting is 40,000 years old, which is when science thinks Genyornis disappeared, or alternatively the Genyornis lived a lot longer than science has been able to establish."

Mr Gunn says there are paintings of other extinct animals right across the area including the thylacine, or tasmanian tiger, the giant echidna and giant kangaroo.

"It does give you a window back to a time that you can pinpoint, and in the case of the Genyornis it's a very long picture," he said.

The traditional owners of the land in the Northern Territory say they are excited the painting could be Australia's oldest dated rock art.

The Jawoyn Association's Wes Miller says the painting is one of thousands rediscovered across Arnhem Land in recent years.

"It verifies that the Jawoyn people were living in this country for a very, very long time," he said.

"People say it, but once again this is clearly a demonstration of how long Jawoyn people have been in this country and other Indigenous groups. It's great from that point of view. It's pretty exciting stuff."


http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/31/2913350.htm?section=justin

 
(Submitted by Chad Arment)