Wood Harrier

Wood Harrier
Conservation status
Extinct (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Falconiformes (or Accipitriformes, q.v.)
Family:	Accipitridae
Genus:	Circus
Species:	C. dossenus
Binomial name
Circus dossenus Olson & James 1991

The Wood Harrier or Mime Harrier (Circus dossenus) is an extinct bird of prey which lived in Hawaii during the Holocene. This rather small species of harrier with short wings which inhabited the forests of Molokai and Oahu where it presumably hunted for small birds and insects.

Description

The Wood Harrier was a small harrier, compared to the recent species of the genus Circus. It had rather short wings but long legs and was even outsized by the small Pied Harrier and Montagu's Harrier.^[1][2]

Distribution

The Wood Harrier was presumably restricted to the islands of Ohau and Molokai, since there are no records from other Hawaiian islands. It probably became extinct due to habitat degradation and the introduction of the Pacific Rat by early Polynesians. Since the Wood Harrier was most likely a ground breeder and it preyed upon small birds, it might have been affected severely by the colonization of Hawaii.^[3]

Discovery and taxonomy

In 1981, Helen F. James and her husband Storrs L. Olson first discovered remains of a bird they believed to be an Accipiter because of its proportions. This misidentification was also due to the poor material, consisting only of a few bones. They finally rejected their identification in 1991 after they had examined several other subfossil records of the bird and finally placed it in the genus Circus. They named it dossenus, explaining the name as follows: “Latin, dossenus, a clown or jester, without which one cannot have a circus; especially applicable here because the species initially fooled us as to its generic placement.” They noted that the wide global extension of Circus would support this placement and added that there had been sightings of Northern Harriers in Hawaii so that the evolution of a Hawaiian species of Harrier would indeed seem plausible.^[3]

Literature

• Storrs L. Olson, Helen F. James: Descriptions of thirty-two new Species of Birds from the Hawaiian Islands. In: Ornithological Monographs 45, 1991. ISBN 0-935868-54-2, pp. 65−85 PDF
• Harold Douglas Pratt: The Hawaiian honeycreepers: Drepanidinae. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 019854653X
• Alan C. Ziegler: Hawaiian natural history, ecology, and evolution. University of Hawaii Press, 2002. ISBN 0824821904

References

1. ^ Olson & James 1991, p. 67
2. ^ Pratt 2005, p. 233
3. ^ ^{a b} Olson & James 1991, p. 85