Bad news about the slender-billed curlew

Bird species thought to be extinct in first recorded case

They’ve made it the first recorded case by imposing a restriction to mainland Europe, and thereby excluding the great auk. Wikipedia says that there have been two other Holocene bird extinctions in Europe, the Ibiza rail (Ibiza) about 7,000 years ago, and the Tyrrhenian eagle (Corsica and Sardinia) about 10,000 years ago. Other avian island endemics seem to have died out before human settlement, which contrasts with mammals, where several island endemics survived into historical times.

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Let’s hope that not too many more extinctions follow - there are plenty of species of birds that are declining rapidly.