by David Day
Of a royal bloodline in some distant future age
Only a pathetic huddled gathering
Like those last few enslaved Trojan Women
One last captive flock held in a cage
And displayed for the conquerors’ amusement
In the Cincinnati Zoo
And yes, among them was a Hecuba
The last great queen of her race
There, in a pen open to wind and rain
Ill-fed and neglected by their keepers
The captives fell away one by one
Until only the queen remained
Without the least awareness of irony
Or intent at a final insult
Her keepers gave her the name “Martha”
After Martha Washington – mother of the nation
That exterminated her species
Nor did her humiliation end with her death
Her carcass encased in a block of ice
Was transported to the capital
Where she was eviscerated and embalmed
Denied the dignity and respect of a proper burial
Her carcass is displayed in the Smithsonian
Like a severed head on a spike
In her passing came the end
Of this great wonder of our world
As significant to us as the obliteration
Of Troy was to the Greeks
Should the memory of “Martha” haunt us
As the shade of Hecuba haunted the Greeks?
Those conquerors who – for centuries thereafter –
Would hear, in the howling desolate wind
Sweeping over the plains of the Hellespont,
The tortured wailing of that last great queen
THE GODLESS GAME
THIRD WATCH 5 A. M. VEIL
HEATH HEN – 1933 – Tympanuchus cupido cupido
Alexander Wilson – 1811
American Ornithology , Wilmington, North Carolina
A sharp focus is brought to bear on the state of mind of the people of those days* when conservation was discussed. It is recorded that when the chairman read the name of the bill “An Act for the Preservation Of the Heath-Hen and Other Game”, the northern members were astonished and could not see the propriety of preserving “Indians or any other heathen”.
* State Legislature, New York – 1791
Heath Hens inhabited nearly the whole of the open prairie from Maine to Pennsylvania. They bred and fed in groupings of several thousand strong and the plain was alive in springtime with the characteristic uproar of hundreds of males “booming” their mating dance. This made them easy targets for market hunters, and Wilson notes that the price of a brace of grouse over 20 years after 1800 went up from $1 to $5. Despite its obvious immanent obliteration, no measures were taken to preserve it, and it became extinct in New York State, Pennsylvania, and mainland New England by 1844. A sternum bone in New York’s American Museum of Natural History is the only evidence of the bird’s having once lived in New York State.
Thomas Nuttal – 1840
An Ornithologist’s Journal , Boston, Massachusetts
Not long ago, the Heath Hen had been so common on the ancient brushy site of Boston, that servants stipulated with their employers not to have Heath Hen brought to the table oftener than a few times a week. In western Massachusetts the last bird was shot in 1830, and is all but extinct on the mainland. It is now only protected on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
In 1890, there were an estimated 200 surviving Heath Hens – all on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. However, by 1908, these were down to 50 when a 1600 acre reserve was set aside for them, and their numbers rose dramatically by 1915 to 2000. It appeared as if the species would survive, but in 1916 the population dropped to 150; and by 1925 there were only 20 remaining. By 1930, there was only a single male until, at the age of 8, it vanished forever on the evening of 11 March 1933.
New Zealand’s only indigenous game bird was the once numerous New Zealand Quail or Koreke (Coturnix novaezelandiae). This bird suffered depletion of numbers through over-hunting for food and sport, but the final extirpation was only achieved through the efforts of Sir Walter Buller, New Zealand’s foremost ornithologist. Keen to acquire specimens of the near-extinct species, in 1868 near Blueskin Bay, Buller discovered a covey of twenty birds. In the name of science, Buller shot every one of them: the last twenty Koreke in existence.
The most remarkable and unique species of game bird to become extinct in the last couple of centuries has to be the Bengali Pink-Headed Duck (Rhodensessa caryophyllacea). In Bengali it was called the Saknal; in Hindustani Golabi-sir; in Tirhoot Umar; and in Nepalese Dumrar. Once thought to be a true freshwater duck (genus Anas), it later was assigned a genus unto itself, Rhodenessa. It was not only unique in having a pink head and neck, but was also the only duck to lay perfectly spherical eggs. Extinguished in the wild by 1935, the last Pink-Headed Duck died in captivity in Fitzwarren Park, England in 1942.
Another unique species of waterfowl and game bird was a sea-duck that once inhabited the Atlantic coast of Canada and America. This was the strikingly parti-coloured Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), which was also called the Pied Duck and Skunk Duck because of its distinctive black and white markings. Like the Pink-Headed Duck, it was the only bird of its genus, Camptorhynchus. The Labrador Duck was last seen and shot on Long Island in 1875.
Arthur Beetle Hough – 1933
Vineyard Gazette , Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
The Heath Hen failed to adapt to changing conditions and fell victim to the laws of natural selection. This is a curious thing, for until the white men took over the land, the Heath Hen had achieved an admirable adaptation, embodying such fine distinctions of nature that scientists appreciate their nicety and would like to understand them better. Even if you knew where a Heath Hen was, against a background of twigs and brush, you could not see it unless it moved. Failed to adapt! Why, no creature was ever more at home, more nicely adjusted to place and time than the Heath Hen on the Vineyard plains! The whole trouble lay in the fact that the Heath Hen was a bird man could kill, and so it had to die. The extinction of the Heath Hen has taken away part of the magic of Martha’s Vineyard. This is the added loss of the island. There is a void in the April dawn, there is an expectancy unanswered, there is a tryst not kept.
This moving obituary for the Heath Hen was published in the Vineyard Gazette on April 21, 1933 by the newspaper’s owner, Arthur Beetle Hough.
THE STREAM OF LIFE*
Heath Hen – 1933
Arthur Beetle Hough
Vineyard Gazette
Now we know there are degrees
Even in death.
All around us nature is full of casualties,
But they do not interrupt the stream of life.
Yet, to the Heath Hen something
More than death has happened,
Or, rather, a different kind of death.
There is no survivor, there is no future,
There is no life to be created in this form again.
We are looking upon the uttermost finality
Which can be written,
Glimpsing the darkness which will not know
Another ray of light.
We are in touch
With the reality of extinction.
* As an elegy to the Heath Hen, I found I could do no better than construct a “found poem” from final lines of Arthur Beetle Hough’s 1933 obituary of the Heath Hen. This is the only found poem chosen to serve as an elegy in this collection, and is as emotionally moving as it is profoundly thoughtful about “the reality of extinction.”
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INDEX
Principal Animals and Reportage Authors
Aitchison, J. E. T. – 147
American Black Bison – see Black Bison
Anderson, N. P. – 80
Antarctic Wolf Fox – see Warrah
Antonius, Otto – 50, 149
Argoll, Samuell – 160
Assyrian Onager – Equus hemionus hemippus (1930) – 145
Atlas Golden Lion – Panthera leo leo (1922) – 53
Atsutane, Hirata – 77
Audubon, John James – 114,135,170,171
Auk – see Great Auk
Aurochs – Bos primogenius (1627) – 40
Bali Tiger – Panthera tigris balica (1937) – 92
Banks, Sir Joseph – 153
Bison – see Black Bison
Black Bison – Bison bison pennsylvanicus (1825) – 159
Boone, Daniel – 161
Boswell, R. – 88
Bowes, Surgeon Arthur – 121
Burchell, William John – 140
Byron, Lord John – 107
Caesar, Julius – 42
Cartier, Jacques – 101, 167
Cartwright, George – 103
Cateby, Mark – 133
Colenso, William – 67