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Grallards: New Zealand’s Next Extinction or Newest Species?

10,000 Birds

Unfortunately for the hunters these were already all extinct, and with the introduction of cats, rats, stoats and the like the only upland game bird, the New Zealand Quail , was fast on the way out too. Using ministerial connections he obtained 100 mallard eggs from the US and began to breed and distribute them.

Species 166
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A Field Guide to the Wildlife of South Georgia: A Book Review by a Penguin Groupie

10,000 Birds

The length of each bird species account varies, depending on whether the bird is native or a “visitor” (the book’s term for migrant) or vagrant, breeding or non breeding. They breed in dense colonies, incubate their single egg on the feet, and take more than a year to fledge a chick.

Georgia 173
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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

But you can take solace in the results at the end of the breeding year, when loafing around the intertidal are a shiny new cohort of finely plumage grey youngsters, all ready to carry on Western Gull line into the future. Take a project to remove rats from the Californian island of Anacapa (in the Channel Islands). Western Gull chick.

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The Whistle Blowers

10,000 Birds

The whistling duck call carries with it the crimes of big business, the failures of governments and the ignorance of irresponsible hunters. The combined effects of hunting, habitat loss and predation by introduced animals like rats and mongoose have extirpated the species from some islands and reduced numbers significantly on others.

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Ghana – Rainforest Birding on the Brink by Adam Riley

10,000 Birds

We actually spent considerable time searching unsuccessfully for this highly sought-after bird; however I did suspect they were not gone, as several hunters I interviewed knew the bird and claimed it still existed. Whilst in Atewa Range Forest Reserve, a hunter passed us deep in the forest and I asked him to show us his night’s catch.

Ghana 191
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Australia’s extinct and threatened bird species

10,000 Birds

Rats arrived on ships and cats, foxes and rabbits were all introduced and they were all detrimental to the bird population. The population decline is generally blamed on habitat destruction and introduced predators, but inter-breeding may also be to blame.

Species 174