Science
Related: About this forumScientist Takes First-Ever Photo of Rare Bird, Then Kills It in the Name of Science
When Chris Filardi, director of Pacific Programs at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was finally holding the elusive Guadalcanal moustached kingfisher, he told Slate writer Rachel Gross, it was like finding a unicorn.
Filardi had been searching for the orange, white, and brilliant-blue bird for more than 20 years, when on a field study in the high forests of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, he finally heard the ko-ko-ko-ko-kiew sound of what he described as the unmistakable call of a large kingfisher.
After days of tracking, he and his colleagues captured a male moustached kingfisher in a mist net.
When I came upon the netted bird in the cool shadowy light of the forest I gasped aloud, Oh my god, the kingfisher, one of the most poorly known birds in the world was there, in front of me, like a creature of myth come to life. Filardi wrote in a Sept. 23 blog post.
The team snapped the first-ever photos of the remarkably photogenic bird and made the first-ever recordings of a male variety of the species (a female was described back in the 1920s).
Then the team killed it.
https://news.yahoo.com/scientist-takes-first-ever-photo-rare-bird-then-201207749.html
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)Sad that this is still going on today.
Wouldn't they learn much more by tagging it and letting it remain free, and ALIVE?
sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)that museum curators seem to not be able to give up is simply pathetic.
brewens
(13,567 posts)captured one before, it should have been released. One on to it's territory, if they found that they were actually numerous, I wouldn't be opposed the their taking a specimen. In this case, a picture should have been enough.
What I guess are called North American Kingfishers are really cool to see. In my part of Idaho, we don't see many but they are around. Floating and fishing for bass on the lower Snake River, just downstream from Hell's Canyon one day, I had a kingfisher giving me hell! A buddy and I had just come around a bend and parked on a sand bar. What looked like a nice bass hole must have been near the birds nest. It hovered at a distance evidently trying to bluff us away. I can't really remember the sound it made but it was quite severe. Like we usually do, if a few casts don't get us a fish, we moved on and let the kingfisher have it's territory back.
My dad actually served on Guadalcanal. Navy in WWII. Long range recon. PB4Y's, the Navy designation for B-24's. My best friends dad was with the 25th Infantry Division "Pacific Lightning". The army infantry that relieved the marines and had the task of clearing the island of remaining Japanese infantry. My dad had it easy compared to his. What were left of the Japanese on that island put up a brutal resistance to the end.
suffragette
(12,232 posts)of other single-island endemic animals, such as invasive species, habitat degradation from logging and mining, and shifting temperatures owing to climate change."
Filardi left off the challenge of being killed by him or maybe he is is just one of those 'invasive species'.