The Birds I Never Met | North America's Extinct Birds

Recently I looked into a number of extinct birds from all around the world, but few of them shed light on those that I would've lived alongside. Today we're "borrowing" my mom's field guide on the Birds of Eastern and Central North America to learn about those birds that I might've witnessed had I been alive only a century ago!

Follow me on Twitter @theatlaspro

Special thanks to LesleytheBirdNerd

Sources / Further Reading:

[maddoxgreene]

“The fish and wildlife service removed species from the endangered species list”
Yay :D
“They’re now extinct”
Oh :(

[ajrobbins]

The people who insist that mass extinctions driven by humans is "business as usual" are ignoring our limited understanding of ecological consequences.
Basically, we cannot account for all the side effects of a species absence, even after the fact.

[sewisinc.]

I have known about the Passenger pigeon for ages now and I can't wrap my head around the fact that it went from billions of individuals to down right extinct within a century or two.

[benjaminoverton]

Ignore the haters.
The conservation of all animals is very important, and you are helping to inspire others by making the videos that you do.
Keep up the great work!

[LesleytheBirdNerd]

Thank you very much for the opportunity this was a pleasure to do and I love how you edited it together.
Enjoying the video so far, and learning some things I never knew. Awesome work!
~Lesley

[martinkois]

That last section reminded me of the mantra I teach my environmental science students: Threats to Biodiversity are Threats to Humanity.

[inceldestroyer]

When I was a kid in the 2000s I'd always see bats during the summer by my town in PA on the Susquehanna river. I havent seen a bat in years and randomly wondered the other day, sure enough they are now endangered due to a fungus giving them white nose disease.

[blackcatatelier]

Anyone who thinks some animals going extinct is not that important clearly has little understanding of ecology. keep up the good work and congratulations for how the channel is growing hope you reach more people with every video.

[Akislav]

This one, is probably your most heavy hitting video you've made so far. You've outdone yourself again and again.

[waynepooley]

Damn... booming ben kinda made me shed a tear.

imagine calling out to your species not knowing they're all gone

[velocirapper]

Love this channel and the great effort you put into it. The island biogeography series didnt get the views it deserved. Especially the 3rd video which makes me really sad because that one was the best. Love your content always.

[veggieboyultimate]

While all the birds you mentioned were truly a significant loss, the passenger pigeon was what stuck out the most. To think there was a bird that abundant in my area, Connecticut, left me feeling left out in seeing such spectacular animals.

[richardrich]

As an ornithologist and ecologist from Elmira, NY, I always love hearing more about the Labrador duck. Another reason it might have flown so far inland was to find a mate, when species are so rare they go to great lengths to find them. There's a statue of the bird in the park downtown where the sighting took place, and nobody talks about it. But Binghamton's not far, so if you ever feel like making a pilgrimage, come see it!

[ItzRetz]

I did some research of my own like you suggested and found out that Australia used to have FOUR species of Emu, not just the one we have now. The Dwarf Emu, the Tasmanian Emu, and the Black Emu. All three of them went extinct due to 'hunting and human started bush fires'. I never knew this. We aren't taught this stuff in school. That's so sad.
Maybe the Emu War would've gone differently if all four species were still around when it happened. Now I know why the Emu won that war, because they were looking for revenge, and rightfully so.

[cllax]

I remember camping with my dad and my dad telling me how passenger pigeons used to darken the sky when flocks of them would fly overhead. That was the first time my child brain grasped the idea of extinction and I remember feeling such a somber wave of emotion as I realized that humans completely wiped out animals that once numbered in the millions. I still feel sad to this day that I will never see old growth trees thousands of years old from horizon to horizon, hear bison rutting so loud that you can’t sleep like Lewis & Clark wrote about, and seeing troves of passenger pigeons darken the sky above. The next great extinction event of the world is happening now and we are the cause of it.

[michaeljf]

"... We're removed from the endangered species list..."

YAY!

"... and declared extinct."

oh...

[lookash]

As an European I always think how many species went extinct in Europe before people here at least started describing them in books. I wonder how many species disappeared from Europe and we will never know that they lived on our continent.

[gaius]

It’s so sad to me that people don’t understand the tragedy of human caused extinctions. Thank you so much for approaching the situation with the gravity it deserves keep up the amazing work

[crackedemerald]

"exctintion is a natural event"
So is death, and if you had one happen close to you, it's not good.
"Humans are natural"
We are, and we can communicate with eachother and coordinate to not doom ourselves in the future

[greggougeon]

I learned that one of the reasons on top of all the ones listed for the extinction of the passenger pigeon is their breeding habits. It is theorized that they would refuse to mate in small numbers due to fear of predation. So as we decimated populations the smaller flocks went extinct due to lack of mating.