Scientist Captures Bird's Final Song Before Extinction

A mournful call from the last living Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird in the 1980s has resurfaced following a depressing announcement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

Last Monday, the FWS announced that 21 species had been delisted from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of extinction. One of the delisted species was the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird, which likely went extinct in 1987, 20 years after it was added to the ESA.

Ornithologist H. Douglas Pratt captured a recording of one of the last-known calls from the bird that is now stored at Cornell University's department of ornithology. The recording is one of the last known ʻōʻō bird callings. Pratt described the song as a "very loud whistling call" in a 2019 report by technology blog Engadget.

"It's a very haunting song," Pratt told Newsweek on Monday,adding that seeing the bird in the wild was a "peak experience" of his life. "If it was just an ordinary sounding bird, it'd be one thing, but it really had a spectacular voice, and it's a shame that you can't hear it anymore."

Pratt said he made the recordings and saw the bird in 1975, several years before its last-known sighting. Pratt told Newsweek that many of Hawaii's birds are at risk of contracting bird malaria or bird pox, which contributed to the extinction of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird.

The Discovery Channel aired a brief YouTube episode titled, "The Last Song of the Kauai O'o Bird" in 2015 that highlighted the last male of the species. In the video, Christopher Clark, a Johnson senior scientist with the Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program, spoke about the bird's whistling call.

"He is the last male of a species singing for a female who will never come," Clark said as the bird whistled in the background.

Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center scientist Jim Jacobi also recorded one of the male's last songs in 1986. The recording is digitized and stored in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library. The bird was calling to its mate who had died, and Jacobi quickly recorded the bird's song.

Jacobi recounted his sighting of the bird in a 2018 article by The Rumpus. The bird flew close to Jacobi and called for its mate. Jacobi was able to record part of the song before the bird flew away. However, when he rewound the tape and played the song, the bird returned.

"All of a sudden, the bird came right back. I thought, 'this is great, it came back!' And then it hit me: The reason it came back is it heard another bird. And it hadn't heard another bird in, you know, how long. And it turns out this was probably the last one there was," Jacobi said.

Newsweek reached out to Jacobi by email for comment.

The FWS described the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a species of honeyeater, as a "black bird that measures approximately 8 inches long. Its belly and undertail coverts are brown, and its throat is streaked with white. Its one distinct feature is its yellow leg feathers which stands out against a black body."

The FWS announcement served as a "wake-up call" for the decline of certain endangered species. This year is the 50th anniversary of the ESA, which is credited with saving 99 percent of listed species from extinction, according to a press release from the government agency.

"Federal protection came too late to reverse these species' decline, and it's a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it's too late," Service Director Martha Williams said in a statement. "As we commemorate 50 years of the Endangered Species Act this year, we are reminded of the Act's purpose to be a safety net that stops the journey toward extinction. The ultimate goal is to recover these species, so they no longer need the Act's protection."

Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by phone for comment.

Many of the delisted species were birds and species of mussels. The Little Mariana fruit bat, last seen in 1968, was the only mammal delisted from the list. Delisted birds included the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, the large Kauai thrush and the Bachman's warbler, among many others.