My Eskimo Curlew Obsession

I wrote this about my Eskimo Curlew obsession.  Since I've written this article, the Squidoo site was merged with HubPages.  The link still works, but you will be directed to HubPages instead of Squidoo.

Eskimo Curlew Painting in the last 1880s
by Archibald Thorburn (1860 - 1935).

A lot of people know that my favorite bird is the killdeer, but, I'm also obsessed with Eskimo curlews. It all started when I saw (or saw again), the ABC Afterschool Special and read the book by Fred Bodsworth called "Last of the Curlews". It was a sad story about a lone male curlew in search of a mate, and then finds one, only to lose her at the very end of what was a promising travel back to the nesting area. The whole story of the Eskimo curlew was a very sad one that may have ended in extinction. But, I deeply hope that is not the case.

The Eskimo curlew was the smallest curlew in the Americas and was once the most numerous shorebirds in the region. It looked a lot like the whimbrel which is still pretty plentiful in most areas today. It had a remarkable migration going from the top of the Earth in the high arctic, almost all the way down to the tip of South America, though not quite as far as the red knot or arctic tern does. Like many birds in the mid to late 1800s in the United States, it was hunted mercilessly and went from multiple millions of birds to practically none in about twenty years. The bird had an endearing characteristic of returning to comfort its hurt mates and colleagues when they were shot or injured. Hunters took this as stupidity and this trait of the curlews made it easier to mow down huge flocks of these birds for the market.

Even when this bird became extremely rare, it continued to be shot by collectors wanting to be the ones to have one of the last Eskimo curlews in its existence. With the passage of the Migratory Bird Act in 1918, most of the shooting stopped, but it was too late. The bird was considered extinct in the 1940s, but was re-found in the 1950s. A pair of birds was frequently seen in Texas each year from the late 1950s to early 1960s when the two were photographed. One bird was shot in Barbados in 1963. This ends the last official records of the species. But, other sightings were confirmed up to the 1980s. There have even been fairly credible sightings up until the early to mid-2000s.

I maintain a page on Squidoo about Eskimo curlew sightings. One of the problems that people seem to be having is distinguishing the curlew from the whimbrel. Most people alive now have never seen an Eskimo curlew even in a museum. Skins of the bird are not common and only a handful museums display mounted specimens and mostly in the states where the specimen was obtained. Most skins are kept locked up and one has to get special permission to view and study them up close. Juvenile whimbrels can look very much like Eskimo curlews, especially far out on a mud flat. Many people also confuse Eskimo curlews with long-billed curlews. Even back in the 1960s, with photographs and a specimen, even sighting was highly scrutinized. Without physical proof, no sighting of this bird will ever be accepted now. Since the bird was, more or less, officially declared extinct this year after 50 years of lack of physical proof, I haven't heard of a single sighting where I usually hear of at least two or three a year.

Remembering Martha and her Kind

Martha probably never knew how special she was.  She probably never knew she was the last of her kind and no more of her family existed anywhere.  She spent most of her life in the Cincinnati Zoo where she passed away on September 1st, 1914, exactly 100 years ago.

Martha, stuffed, in 1921
Photo by Robert W. Shufledt  

Passenger pigeons once filled the sky in various areas east of the Mississippi River.  They traveled in one huge flock from food source to food source and nesting site to nesting site.  They were often seen flying over in large groups for days.  People often described the loud beating of their wings as they massed in such a large flock.  Europeans often considered them a pest, native people considered them a blessing from the creator.  No one ever thought they could go extinct.  Then, one day, they were gone pretty much all of a sudden.

For at least a few thousand years, perhaps longer, native peoples lived alongside the pigeons with no problem.  The pigeon squabs were collected by the native people before they fledged.  The people used an almost unlimited number of squabs for food.  But,  they never seemed to have affected the population despite the heavy harvest.  One thing native people's tended not to do is hunt the adults during nesting season (though some tribes didn't totally ban hunting the nesting birds, they did hunt them less at this time).

The white man, however, hunted them at any time all the time whenever he saw them.  The market hunters in the 1800s would wipe out large numbers of adult birds at one time.  They also cleared more and larger tracks of the forests that supplied the pigeons with food.  This led to a rapid decline of the pigeons as well as other species, like the Eskimo curlew, the most numerous shorebird in the world at that time.  After about forty years, all that was left was Martha.  People killed them all off.

People tried to save the pigeon, but many people saw the pigeon as a pest and in abundance, so they didn't think it really needed saving.

One thing Martha has taught modern people is that you shouldn't take advantage of any species just because they're abundant to the point of being a pest.  For example, Canada geese, at one time, were so reduced that people rarely saw them.  Now, they're everywhere.  The same with white-tailed deer.

I am reading A Feathered River Across the Sky.  It's a bit wordy, but contains a lot of information on the passenger pigeon and it's relationship with human beings.  You can buy it by clicking the link below.

Band-Tailed Pigeon by Tyler Karaszewski
https://www.flickr.com/people/tylerkaraszewski/

The band-tailed pigeon is a local relative of the passenger pigeon.  It doesn't live in large flocks, but does like to gather in the mountain forests of the west.  There are efforts to clone and re-create a passenger pigeon and the band-tailed pigeon will be both the host for the clone and a source of DNA to fill the gaps in the DNA already extracted from mounted specimens.

I once came across the band-tailed pigeon who had accidentally strayed west of the mountains.  They are a large pigeon and usually solitary or in pairs.  It, promptly flew off.








I found this interesting article while researching Passenger Pigeons.  It explains more about them than I can say in this blog:

A Feathered Tempest

De-extinction Projects to Resurrect Extinct Species

The 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon is coming up very soon.  It's a sad anniversary and shows that just because an species is abundant doesn't mean it won't quickly go extinct.  The passenger pigeon extinction shows us that we shouldn't take advantage of the abundance of a species.

Here is an article I wrote last year about de-extinction projects to possibly bring back extinct species, at least their essence, though advanced cloning techniques.

Passenger Pigeon by Tim Krepp

There once was a time when there were different species of birds whose populations were so numerous that they were said to darken the skies for days as they passed over. At one time, there was an animal that helped thin out forests in Europe and became the ancestor of modern cattle. Once, there was a colorful parakeet that lived farther north than any other parakeet and was easy to tame. At one time, the booming sounds of a chicken-like bird could easily be heard around well populated towns of the eastern United States. But, no more, those animals are extinct.

But, perhaps they aren't gone forever. New technology and scientific knowledge may bring those animals back into existence. Stewart Brand mentioned several projects currently going on to bring several species back to life in his TED talk in February 2013. Among the species currently being worked on are the passenger pigeon, auroch, and the buccardo. During the talk, Brand mentioned several projects involving new techniques with cloning using related host species and back-breeding.

Besides the projects mentioned in Stewart Brand's talks, several other projects are well on their way to restore certain species. In South Africa, efforts are going on to restore the quagga, which was once considered an extinct species. With modern genetic studies, it was found that quaggas are actually a concentrated race of plains zebra that lived in South Africa. Plains zebra often exhibit variations in their stripes and patterns, including the lack of stripes on some parts of the body. While their project has had some successes, they are still a long way to completely replicating an actual quagga similar to the ones captured or killed in the late 19th century.

More projects could be in the works as the cost is decreased and cloning is perfected. Imagine a world where Eskimo curlew, the great auk, and the Labrador duck are still seen in their natural habitat like they were over a hundred years ago. It will be a long time before longer-extinct species such as mammoths and woolly rhinos come back into existence. There are other considerations such as whether there is an environment to come back to. Questions as to whether or not these "re-made" animals can survive in the wild at all or what impact would they have on existing animals that have filled in the gaps they left when they went extinct.

I, for one, would love to see some of these animals come back into existence. I feel that the people of the past deprived me of seeing many of them, especially the ones that went extinct in the early 20th century. I would like to see how they looked and behaved, even if they're only kept in captivity or for scientific research. I would love to hear the sound of the Eskimo curlew or see the beauty of the Carolina parakeet. Of course, none of these animals would be exactly like their extinct counterparts due to the difficulty of extracting their DNA from long dead specimens.

Sources:
Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?
The Quagga Project