Errol Fuller

thumb|Errol Fuller Errol Fuller (born 19 June 1947) is an English writer and painter in oils. He is noteworthy for his books on extinction and extinct birds and mammals. Quotes In 1844, Robert FitzRoy (once captain of the HMS Beagle Beagle, now Governor of New Zealand) interviewed an ancient Māori people Maori named Haumatangi who claimed to have seen, when only a boy, James Cook Captain Cook and — 2 years earlier than this — the trapping of a moa. Another aged Maori, Kawane Paipai, recalled taking part in moa hunts on the plains of Waimate#Geography Waimate during the final years of the eighteenth century. Extinct Birds 1st Viking/Rainbird 1987 9780670817870 https://books.google.com/books?id=iulPAAAAYAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=haumatangi 32 (256 pages) Anyone looking quickly at a stuffed great auk might think it was a penguin, and this is hardly surprising. Except for its enormous beak, an auk looks very much like a penguin. Penguins are largely black and white. So are auks. When out of the water, penguins tend to stand upright, with their short legs mostly hidden by feathers and body. Great auks stood in much the same way. Neither penguins nor great auks have wings that are capable of flight. Instead, they both became perfectly adapted to life in the sea, where, over eons, they developed extraordinary diving and swimming abilities. Each became so adept at living in watery conditions that their lives were given up almost exclusively to water.The life of a penguin is probably quite similar to the life great auks used to lead. But although there are so many similarities, there is no close relationship between these birds. The similarities are superficial, and they are examples of what is known as "convergent evolution." The Great Auk: The Extinction of the Original Penguin Bunker Hill Publishing pbk, abridged 2003 9781593730031 https://books.google.com/books?id=35rGM50pAoAC&pg=PA14 14 (1st edition 1999) More words have been written about the dodo than about any other extinct bird. Yet the truth is that almost nothing is known of this strange creature. The bird lived only on the small, isolated island of Mauritius, way out in the Indian Ocean, and the first notice of it comes in a book published in 1599. Around 60 years later the species was extinct. What survives from this brief period of interaction with human beings is very little. There are some 15 written accounts (most of which are disappointingly lacking in informative content), a similar number of paintings (some of which contradict others), a large pile of bones, and a stuffed head and foot. The Dodo: Extinction in Paradise Bunker Hill Publishing 2003 9781593730024 pbk, abridged https://books.google.com/books?id=HSwj4lDNq4QC&pg=PA5 5 (1st edition 2002) Sometimes the extinction of a species can be traced back to a single cause. More often there are a number of contributory factors. But the case of the Atitlán grebe Giant Grebe of Lake Atitlán has everything: murder, habitat destruction, political interference, the introduction of an alien species, dilution of the bloodstock by hybridisation, the effects of tourism, pollution, civil war, and an earthquake.Perhaps just as extraordinary as any of these things is the fact that the final years of its destruction were chronicled in the most intense detail by a fanatically dedicated woman named Anne LaBastille (1935–2011). In numerous magazine articles and papers in learned journals she recounted the story of her attempts to save the birds from disaster, and pleaded for help with her efforts. Finally, when all was lost, she wrote a highly personal book. Called Mama Poc (poc being the sound the birds made) and published in 1990, it is a thorough record of her forlorn struggle to save the species. Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record A&C Black 2013 9781408160015 https://books.google.com/books?id=id9VAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA19 19 (240 pages) The story of the Passenger pigeon Passenger Pigeon reads like a work of fiction. At the start of the nineteenth century these birds existed in unimaginable numbers — billions upon billions. The species may have made up as much as 40 percent of the bird population of North America. It may even have been the most numerous bird species on the planet. The flocks were so large and dense they blackened the skies, blotted out the sun. But by the century's end it was over; the birds were gone from the wild. By the year 1914 just a single individual (out of all the countless millions) was left. She was called Martha (passenger pigeon) Martha and she lived alone in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden Cincinnati Zoo. In September this last representative of her species died, and as a living entity the Passenger Pigeon was no more. Along with the Woolly mammoth Woolly Mammoth, the Dodo, and the Tyrannosaur, the species had become one of the great icons of extinction. The Passenger Pigeon Princeton University Press 2014 9780691162959 https://books.google.com/books?id=MGuYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA9 9 (184 pages) External links Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:Painters from England Category:Non-fiction authors from England