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[rayleeschobel]

2025 Patreon Print Recap 10/12: Labrador Duck

Patreon reward for October 2025

Labrador Duck

Edit: Somewhere in writing my initial blurb about the Labrador Duck, I'm guessing I accidentally hit the "9" key when I meant to hit the "8" key... this resulted in me not only having the incorrect year of extinction in the info about the species, but also in the final print (⸝⸝⸝-﹏-⸝⸝⸝) The Labrador Duck went extinct in 1878, NOT 1978. Please do better than me and proofread things you write before committing weeks to a project. Okay that's all I love you.

The Labrador Duck, Camptorhynchus labradorius, is an extinct sea duck species. It is notable for also being the first endemic North American bird species to go extinct after the beginning of the Columbian Exchange.

Labrador Ducks were specialized to feed on mullosks, such as snails and clams, and some fishermen even reported catching them accidentally when using mussels as bait. Their bills were highly modified from that of most ducks, having a wide, flattened tip with lamellae inside. The beak was also notably "soft," suggesting that they may have used their beaks to probe for food in sediment.

The reason for the Labrador Duck's extinction is difficult to identify. They were said to have tasted bad and rotted quickly, making hunters generally avoid them. However, egg harvesting and feather demand may have had an effect on the species' population. It seems like human influence on the Eastern North American coast played much more of a role in the demise of the species. On the Eastern Seaboard, increasing human population and industry led to a decrease in shallow-water mussel populations, a food source that the Labrador Ducks were dependent on.

The last known Labrador Duck was shot in 1978 in southwest New York. According to legend, it was shot by a teenage boy hunting for food for his family. By the time a local ornithologist arrived with hopes of collecting the skin, the bird had already been plucked and eaten. All that remained were the head and some feathers, but this was enough for the specimen to be identified as the last known Labrador Duck.

[leskylentils]

Faerie bunny (woodcut with watercolor)

[awkward-asexual-artist]

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[rayleeschobel]

Urile perspicillatus

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The Spectacled Cormorant, or Pallas's Cormorant, scientific name Urile perspicillatus, was a species that went extinct in the late 1800s. In modernity, the Spectacled Cormorant's range included Bering Island, and possibly other places in the Commander Islands off the northeast coast of Russia. Fossils found in 2018 suggest that this was just a fraction of their range, with ~120,000 year old remains being found in Japan. Scientists believe that the reason for the drastic decrease in range was due to a natural climatic shift that wiped out plankton populations in the region, which in turn caused the cormorants' food supply to plummet. By the time the species was discovered by humans, only the small population on Bering Island remained.

The Spectacled Cormorant was the largest species of cormorant known to have existed, and beyond the fact that it ate fish, almost nothing is known about their life history. The species was first identified by German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller in 1741 on Vitus Bering's second Kamchatka expedition, who described it as large, clumsy, and almost flightless. Steller wrote that "they weighed 12–14 pounds, so that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men." It comes as no surprise, then, that as the area became further explored and settled, and the whaling and fur trade took hold, the species was ruthlessly harvested for food and hunted to extinction. It's believed that the last Spectacled Cormorant was seen 1852 on Kamen Ariy islet, off the northwestern tip of Bering Island, although the last truly verifiable sighting was in 1840.

[rayleeschobel]

Pinguinus impennis

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The Great Auk, Pinguinus impennis, was a large species of flightless alcid that resided in the Northern Atlantic region. The species was also known as the garefowl or penguin, and was the only modern member of the genus Pinguinus. However, they were unrelated to the penguins of the southern hemisphere, who were in fact named for their resemblance to the Great Auk.

Great Auks could be up to 33 inches tall and weighed about 11 pounds, making them the largest alcid to survive into the modern era. However, their wings were only 6 inches long, rendering them flightless. They were agile in water, but clumsy on land, making them well built for hunting fish and crustaceans but susceptible to land predators. They nested in crowded colonies on remote, rocky islands, where they mated for life and laid one egg per breeding attempt.

Great Auks were an important part of Native American culture, both as a food and clothing source and as a symbolic item. Early European explorers to America used them as a source of food and fishing bait, rapidly reducing numbers. The European population of Great Auks was largely eliminated by the mid-16th century due to high demand of their down to use in pillows.

Around the same time, some European nations began to acknowledge the decline of the species and placed regulations on hunting. However, this did little to actually stop the harvest of the species. The increase in rarity increased the demand for specimen from museums and collectors, which ultimately led to the species' demise. The last two Great Auks were killed in 1844 on Eldey, an island off the coast of Iceland, on request from a merchant who wanted specimens of the species.

[rayleeschobel]

Ectopisted migratorius

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"The Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, was a species of pigeon that once flooded the skies of eastern North America. They were named for their migratory habits both in the common name and Latin; their latin name, Ectopistes migratories, translating roughly to "migratory wanderer". They migrated in enormous flocks, constantly on the search for food, shelter, and breeding grounds. They once numbered between 3 and 5 billion, and were the most abundant bird in North America, possibly on Earth. The noise produced by flocks of passenger pigeons was described as deafening and unmusical, able to be heard from miles away.

More than 130 Passenger Pigeon fossils have been found across 25 US states, with some dating as far back as 100,000 years ago in the Pleistocene Era. Evidence suggests that the Passenger Pigeon's range extended much further west than it did in modernity, but it's impossible to know their abundance in this region and time.

While always hunted by Native Americans, it wasn't until Europeans arrived in North America that the populations of Passenger Pigeons began to plummet. Due to their large numbers, the pigeons became known as a cheap food source, resulting in hunting on a massive scale for many decades. Widespread deforestation and shrinkage of large breeding populations added additional stressors on the species, and the populations slowly declined between 1800 and 1870. Between 1870 and 1890, the population dropped dramatically. The species nested in large communal nesting grounds, and hunters would often target these locations for killing. The last large nesting was in Petoskey, Michigan in 1878, where 50,000 birds were killed daily over a span of 5 months. The nesting attempt was a failure, and a second attempt by the remnants of that population were slaughtered by professional hunters before they had the chance to raise any young. After 1897, only small groups or individual birds were seen, and most often were shot on sight. The last confirmed wild bird was shot in Illinois in 1901. The combination of hunting and deforestation has been referred to a "Blitzkrieg" against the Passenger Pigeon, and it has been labeled one of the greatest and most senseless human-induced extinctions in history.

The very last living Passenger Pigeon was called Martha. She was a resident at the Cincinnati Zoo until her passing in the afternoon of September 1st, 1914. It's widely accepted that she died at about 29 years old."

[rayleeschobel]

Numenius borealis

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"At one point, the Eskimo Curlew, Numenius borealis, was the most numerous shorebird in the tundra of western Canada and Alaska, and possibly the most numerous shorebird in North America. Historic reports of their migration from South America to their nesting grounds in the tundra talk of skies filled with the birds, and one report described a single flock covering an area of 40-50 acres of land in Nevada.

The Eskimo Curlew was a fairly large bird, and thus was seen as an ample food source for hunters. Between 1870 and 1890, the species was hunted relentlessly, much like the Passenger Pigeon years earlier. They made easy targets not only due to their size, but due to the tendency to travel in large flocks and their lack of fear of humans.

Despite the 1916 migratory bird act protecting the species from hunting, the population of Eskimo Curlews never recovered. Four photos of the bird exist, all taken by Don Bleitz on Galveston Island in 1962. The last individual harvested and confirmed sighting was in 1963 in Barbados. There have been a handful of supposed sightings since, but none are substantial enough to be considered more than hypothetical. The Eskimo Curlew retains the title of critically endangered and possibly extinct."

[rayleeschobel]

Psittacula wardi

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"The Seychelles Parakeet, Psittacula wardi, is an extinct species of parakeet that was endemic to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. The species name, wardi, is named for British ornithologist Edward Newton, who procured the specimen that were used to first describe the bird in 1867. Only one description from life was ever made of the bird, by artist Marianne North in 1883.

Little is known about the behavior of the Seychelles Parakeet, but it's assumed that they acted very similar to their closest relative, the Alexandrine Parakeet, which live in groups and daily take flights between their nesting grounds and feeding areas. The few descriptions of Seychelles Parakeets mention that they were unimpressive in attempts at mimicry, and that they were notably "stupid." Their "stupidity" is most likely a product of island tameness, a tendency for species living on islands to lose their weariness of predators due to seclusion from mainland.

When the Seychelles Islands were first described in 1609, they were covered in thick forests and inhabited only by animals. The islands were settled by the French in 1768 and subsequently deforested. Seychelles Parakeets adapted well to cleared and cultivated areas and often ate fruit and maize grown for human consumption, and perceived damage to crops brought persecution to the species. The Seychelles Parakeet was noted as abundant in 1811, but by 1867, it was much rarer. The last confirmed individual was shot in 1893 by an American explorer, and none could be found when a search was conducted in 1906 by British ornithologist Michael John Nicoll. Some people believed that the species survived in the islet of Silhouette until the 1930s, but ornithologist Allen Hume was convinced that they were likely extinct by 1906. Joseph Forshaw, an Australian ornithologist, supposes that the species disappeared sometime between when the last specimen was collected in 1893 and Nicoll's 1906 visit."