- Black Mamo
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Black Mamo 
Black Mamo (Drepanis funerea) Conservation status Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Fringillidae Subfamily: Drepanididae Tribe: Hemignathini Genus: Drepanis Species: D. funerea Binomial name Drepanis funerea
Newton, 1894The Black Mamo (Drepanis funerea) is an extinct bird species once endemic to the island of Molokai, although there is fossil evidence of it having lived on Maui.
Black Mamo and Laysan Millerbird specimens
It measured 8 inches (20 cm) from bill to tail, and was black with faded white primaries and yellow at the base of the bill. The highly decurved bill was longer in the male. Often the forehead would be dusted with pollen of its favorite food, the Lobelia. The Mamo song was a group of nose whistles that sounded like a flute along with a long held out trill. This bird has had many names including Molokai Mamo, O’o nuku’umu, which meant "O’o with sucking beak", and Perking’s Mamo, after ornithologist R.C.L Perkins who produced most of the information about this species.
By habit an understory bird, it was affected by the introduction of cattle and deer which destroyed much its habitat, as well as direct and egg predation by introduced rats and mongooses.
It was discovered in 1893 in the Pelekuna Valley, and named Drepanis funerea by Perkins because it appeared to him to be a dark mourning bird.
The last specimen was collected in 1907 by William Alanson Bryan. Tim Flannery quoted him as having written, "To my joy I found the mangled remains hanging in the tree in a thick bunch of leaves, six feet or more beyond where it had been sitting." Even if Bryan did not shoot the last Black Mamo, sightings stopped within a few years, and a large-scale search for this bird in 1936 found no specimens.
Preserved specimens of the Black Mamo include the ones at Bremen, Boston, Honolulu, London and New York City.
References
- Extinct Birds of Hawaii
- Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten, A Gap in Nature, ISBN 1-876485-77-9
- BirdLife International 2004. Drepanis funerea. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 19 July 2007.
External links
Categories:- IUCN Red List extinct species
- Endemic fauna of Hawaii
- Extinct Hawaiian animals
- Fringillidae
- Genera of birds
- Bird extinctions since 1500
- Animals described in 1893
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