Sad Birds

On Sept. 1, 1914 at 9:32 a.m. (Central Standard Time) in the Cincinnati Zoo died the last passenger pigeon on earth. In March 1932 on Martha's Vineyard died the last heath hen. In the autumn of 1875 the last Labrador duck was shot on Long Island. Last week a half-dozen other U. S. birds were in danger of extinction.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, rarest of U. S. birds, was considered extinct about 1926. But in the latest issue of Audubon Magazine Ornithologist James Taylor Tanner of Cornell estimated that some four & twenty of these birds still live in the loneliest swamps of Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina. Biggest U. S. woodpecker, the ivory-bill once ranged the southern primeval forest, eating larvae from recently dead trees. As the forest dwindled, so did the ivorybill, and Tanner gives it only a slim chance of surviving.

The whooping crane attains a snowy height of six feet, was once considered a game bird. Last week the last 100 survivors were leaving the Gulf coast for their Canadian breeding grounds, where they mate with an elaborate dance. Probably they are holding their own.

The California condor lives to be 100 years old, is the largest flying bird in the world (wingspread: eight to eleven feet). About 40 of these harmless, majestic scavengers remain in the mountain fastnesses of southern and central California. One reason for its decline: it gobbles poisoned carcasses set out for wolves and coyotes.

The trumpeter swan, largest migratory U. S. waterfowl, was believed extinct in 1907. But last fall the Department of Interior counted about 212 in Montana and Wyoming. Its chief enemy is the coyote. But last year a game warden found five dead trumpeters being toted by one hunter, who blithely explained: "It's open season for geese, isn't it?"

The mourning dove has been commoner than the robin in some parts of the U. S. But it is quickly going the way of its late great cousin, the passenger pigeon. Southerners slaughter the birds by the thousands. Stricter hunting laws to protect this vanishing game bird are imminent.

The Carolina parakeet, noisy and gay, was once abundant and ranged as far north as Wisconsin and New York. It was last reported in Florida in 1920.

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