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The wings were only 15 cm (6 in) long, rendering the bird flightless. Instead, the great auk was a powerful swimmer, a trait that it used in hunting. Its favourite prey were fish, including Atlantic menhaden and capelin, and crustaceans. Although agile in the water, it was clumsy on land. Great auk pairs mated for life.
Elephant birds have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar during the 1640s and 1650s, mentioned an ostrich-like bird, said to inhabit unpopulated regions, although it is unclear whether he was repeating folk tales from generations earlier. In 1659, Flacourt wrote of the "vouropatra ...
About 129 species of birds have become extinct since 1500, [ 1] and the rate of extinction seems to be increasing. [ 2] The situation is exemplified by Hawaii, where 30% of all known recently extinct bird taxa originally lived. [ 3] Other areas, such as Guam, have also been hit hard; Guam has lost over 60% of its native bird taxa in the last 30 ...
Aepyornis maximus, one of the largest birds ever. The largest extant species of bird measured by mass is the common ostrich ( Struthio camelus ), closely followed by the Somali ostrich ( Struthio molybdophanes ). A male ostrich can reach a height of 2.8 metres (9.2 feet) and weigh over 156.8 kg (346 lb), [ 1] A mass of 200 kg (440 lb) has been ...
Alcinae Leach, 1820. Fraterculinae Strauch, 1985. Auks or alcids are a group of birds of the family Alcidae in the order Charadriiformes. [ 1] The alcid family includes the murres, guillemots, auklets, puffins, and murrelets. The family contains 25 extant or recently extinct species that are divided into 11 genera.
The moa-nalo (the name literally means "lost fowl"; the plural and the singular are the same) were long unknown to science, having been wiped out before the arrival of James Cook (1778). In the early 1980s, their subfossil remains were discovered in sand dunes on the islands of Molokaʻi and Kauaʻi. Subsequently, bones were found on Maui ...
South Island giant moa. The South Island giant moa ( Dinornis robustus) is an extinct species of moa in the genus Dinornis, known in Māori by the name moa nunui. [ 2] It was one of the tallest-known bird species to walk the Earth, exceeded in weight only by the heavier but shorter elephant bird of Madagascar (also extinct). [citation needed]
Norfolk kākā. The Norfolk kākā ( Nestor productus) is an extinct species [1] [2] of large parrot, belonging to the parrot family Nestoridae. [3] The birds were about 38 cm long, with mostly olive-brown upperparts, reddish-orange cheeks and throat, straw-coloured breast, thighs, rump and lower abdomen dark orange and a prominent beak. [4]