Caracara lutosa (quelili)
When was it declared extinct?
The last confirmed sighting of this bird occurred in 1901.
Where did it spend its time?
This bird of prey can only be found on the island of Guadalupe.
Guadalupe is a small volcanic island located 240 miles off the northwest coast of Mexico. It is 35 kilometers long and 9 kilometers wide at its widest point. Even though it is only a speck in the Pacific Ocean, Guadalupe was once home to a number of animals found nowhere else. The quelili was a well-known Guadalupe resident. This bird of prey was closely related to the caracaras of Central and South America, and perhaps the quelilis ancestors were blown from the mainland during a storm and ended up on the remote, rocky outpost of Guadalupe.
Caracaras are all meat eaters, but they lack the hunting abilities of eagles and falcons. They are weak fliers, unable to swoop down on their prey from great heights.
They prefer to catch and eat small prey that is easily overpowered, and they frequently scavenge. The quelili was known as the "eagle" by the English-speaking residents of Guadalupe, but like the other caracaras, it was no formidable aerial hunter. When the opportunity arose, it apparently fed on small birds, mice, shellfish, worms, insects, and carrion.
A few accounts exist of how the living quelili behaved. Its broad wings were suited to loping flight close to the ground, and it may have been equally at home on the ground, stalking among the low vegetation on its long legs, like the other caracara species. These birds' small flocks were frequently seen in flight, but it is unknown whether they had an ordered social structure. Caracaras are normally solitary creatures, but they will tolerate each other around a carcass, albeit with bouts of loud quarrelling. Perhaps the quelili was friendlier to other creatures of its kind. They were known to communicate through complex displays, such as the bird extending its neck to full length and then arching backward until its head almost touched its back (the crested caracara displays in the same way). Unfortunately, the significance of these displays has been lost, but it could have been the way one quelili asserted dominance over another.
The quelili was most likely the dominant predatory land animal on Guadalupe for tens of thousands of years, but due to its low position in the food chain and the small size of its island home, it would never have been widely distributed. A small island like Guadalupe could never support more than a few hundred quelili, but this bird was a successful scavenger and predator in the geological window in which it lived.
Th is success continued up until the early eighteenth century, at which time humans appeared on the scene. Th e fi rst humans to make any real diff erence to the ecology of Guadalupe were whalers and hunters, who came to catch and kill sea otters, fur seals, and elephant seals. On their ships, they carried goats as a source of meat and milk, and as a way of caching supplies on their hunting routes, they left some goats on Guadalupe. Th e idea was that the goats would survive and the whalers could pick up some fresh meat and milk the next time they were passing. Not only did the goats survive, but they bred in profusion, and before long, there were thousands of them running riot over the once virginal land. Goats in the wrong place can be devastating, as any gardener will attest. They eat anything and everything, and the numerous unique plants that covered Guadalupe were stripped away by thousands of hungry mouths. Th is in itself was not the nail in the coffin of the quelili, but the huge herds of goats soon attracted people. Some came to herd the goats and others came to hunt them, and herder and hunter alike both considered the quelili to be a meddlesome foe that would kill and eat goat kids whenever the opportunity arose. It is very unlikely that the quelili could have captured and killed a healthy goat kid, but it was probably partial to the flesh of a goat carcass. Goatherders may have seen a group of quelili tearing at the carcass of a dead goat kid and presumed the birds were responsible for its death.
The quelili was the goat's number one enemy by the nineteenth century, and it was hunted mercilessly. By the 1860s, rifles and poison had driven it to extinction. As if angry goatherders weren't enough of a challenge, the quelili soon found itself up against an even more tenacious foe: the ornithological collector. The educated world was gripped by the age of discovery, and the race to collect and catalogue the world's treasures was well and truly on. Collectors prize rarities, and institutions and wealthy individuals quickly became aware of the disappearing Guadalupe bird fauna, including the quelili. The term conservation did not exist in the nineteenth century, and collectors systematically exterminated the quelili; the skins were sold to the highest bidder.
Surprisingly, one small group of quelilis survived, but they were identified by Rollo Beck, an ornithologist and collector who arrived on the island on December 1, 1900. He'd only just arrived on the island when he noticed a flock of 11 quelili heading straight for him. In the mistaken belief that the bird was still common, he shot all but two of the flock, effectively eradicating the quelili.
• Guadalupe was once home to a diverse range of plants and animals, but we only know a fraction of the species that lived there. Since humans first colonized the island, at least six bird species and subspecies have become extinct.
• Guadalupe was covered in a variety of vegetation types, ranging from succulent herb areas to endemic cypress forests. Today, almost all of this has vanished, and most of the vegetation is only a few centimeters tall, all thanks to the introduced goats' tireless mouths.
• Guadalupe is governed by Mexico, and despite the fact that the island has been a protected reserve since 1928, little has been done to restore the island's habitats. The goats were removed from the island in 2005, and it is hoped that once these destructive herbivores are gone, the island's vegetation will regenerate naturally.
• Caracara bones from the Rancho La Brea asphalt deposits are supposedly very similar to quelili bones, and because California is so close to Guadalupe, there is a good chance that this is where the quelilis ancestors originated.
STEPHENS ISLAND WREN
When was it declared extinct?
This small bird is thought to have died out in 1894.
Where did it spend its time?
The wren has only been discovered on Stephens Island in New Zealand.
(Stephens Island Wren—The tiny, flightless Stephens Island wren was almost certainly driven to extinction by a cat and a lighthouse keeper.)
Stephens Island, which rises to around 300 metres in height, looms off the northernmost tip of Marlborough Sound on New Zealand's South Island. The island is small (2.6 km2), but it is home to many animals that have vanished from the mainland since Polynesians arrived.
A small bird known as the Stephens Island wren once lived on this prominent clump of rock. This bird was unrelated to the familiar wrens of the Northern Hemisphere, and instead belonged to a small group of New Zealand-only perching birds. The remains of this small bird have been discovered at various locations throughout New Zealand's main islands, and it appears that Stephens Island was the last refuge for this bird after the arrival of humans and the animals they brought with them. A small bird known as the Stephens Island wren once lived on this prominent clump of rock. This bird was unrelated to the familiar wrens of the Northern Hemisphere, and instead belonged to a small group of New Zealand-only perching birds. The remains of this small bird have been discovered at various locations throughout New Zealand's main islands, and it appears that Stephens Island was the last refuge for this bird after the arrival of humans and the animals they brought with them.
The British took over New Zealand as an extension of their expanding empire, and in their expert opinion, Stephens Island needed a lighthouse more than anything else to warn ships away from the rocks. A track to the proposed lighthouse site was cleared in June 1879, and the lighthouse was operational five years later. The lighthouse was no threat to the wren in and of itself, but back then, lighthouses were run by people, and people had pets—often cats.
A pregnant cat was brought to the island at some point in 1894, and it appears that she gave her new owners the slip and escaped as soon as she arrived. This unassuming cat most likely had no idea how special she was. Stephens Island had never seen a predatory land mammal, and the animals on this forested outcrop were woefully unprepared, having never encountered any mammal, let alone one with the predatory proclivities of the domestic cat. One of the escaped cat's offspring was apparently taken in by one of the assistant lighthouse keepers, David Lyall, in June 1894. Lyall was interested in natural history, and the small carcasses his young pet brought back from its forays around this previously untouched island piqued his interest. The carcasses belonged to a tiny bird, but one that Lyall had never seen before. He sent one of the birds to Walter Buller, an eminent New Zealand lawyer and ornithologist, who immediately recognized the sorry-looking carcass as an undescribed species. The bird was unmistakably a New Zealand wren, closely related to another small New Zealand bird, the rifleman. The Stephens Island bird, unlike the rifleman, was blind. The perching birds (passerines), to which these birds belong, have only a couple of flightless representatives.
The only information we have on the Stephens Island wren's life comes from Lyall's limited observations. The only person who saw this species alive described it as "running like a mouse" and "not flying at all." This is the most we know about the living bird, but the structure of the bird's skeleton and plumage allows us to investigate whether Lyall was correct. The skeleton of this tiny bird bears all the hallmarks of a species that has lost its ability to see, and the plumage does not appear to be capable of flapping flight. We can't rule out the possibility that this tiny bird ran, leapt, or glided to catch aerial insects, but it wouldn't have been able to flap its wings with much effect. The great tragedy is that we never learned anything more about this tiny bird.
Lyall brought 16 to 18 specimens of Stephens Island wren to the attention of the scientific establishment in 1894. It is unclear whether his cat caught all of them, but by late 1894, word of this bird had spread throughout the ornithological community, and some collectors were willing to pay top dollar for a specimen—Lionel Walter Rothschild, the famous British collector, purchased nine specimens alone. With the heads of these small birds fetching such a high price, can we be sure Lyall didn't go out and catch some for himself to supplement his income? We'll never know, but the cats and greed were too much for the Stephens Island wren, and by 1894, the species had become extinct—discovery and extinction in the span of a single year. Even by human standards of devastation, this is quite impressive.
• Only 12 of the 16 to 18 specimens collected and sold by Lyall can be found in museum collections around the world today. This is all there is to this fascinating little bird. The prices paid for a Stephens Island wren in 1895 were incredible. Lyall's middleman, a man named Travers, was selling two specimens for £50 each. In 1895, the average annual salary for a lighthouse keeper was £140.
• We don't know how the ancestors of the Stephens Island wren managed to cross the 3.2 km of ocean between the mainland and the island. Because the populations of this bird on the mainland were also fl ightless, it must have floated to the island on vegetation rafts. Hamilton's frog, one of the world's rarest amphibians, lives on Stephens Island. This animal will perish if immersed in seawater for an extended period of time, so it, too, must have floated across to Stephens Island on large rafts of vegetation detached from riverbanks during floods and storms.
• Stephens Island is now a safe haven for a variety of endemic New Zealand animals, including the ancient tuatara and a large number of weta, the giant insects that fill an ecological niche similar to that occupied by mice and other rodents elsewhere in the world.
very good information