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Come@Me: Don’t Mourn for Extinct Birds

10,000 Birds

Pink pigeon near Le Pétrin, Mauritius by Michael Hanselmann, used under Creative Commons license. A bit of background: Pink Pigeons are medium-sized, pink/gray/ brown birds found on the island of Mauritius, Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. He is the Harvey Weinstein of Pink Pigeons). More about the Dodo in a minute.)

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A History of Birdwatching in 100 Objects: A Review

10,000 Birds

The story of the flightless Dodo, discovered on the island of Mauritius in 1598 and killed off by 1700, is sad and familiar. Number 10, Stuffed Dodo at the Horniman Museum, London, c. 1700, is a fake, formed from a plaster cast of a real Dodo head and real Dodo feet combined with chicken wings and Ostrich feathers.

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The man who saved species

10,000 Birds

Earlier attempts to spread the risk around had failed, so Don and his team applied science to the problem, spending several months studying the birds in the wild in order to work out how to care for them and to decide what type of habitat to release them into. It worked, and the translocated birds were soon breeding.

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