Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

I continue with the saga of recently-extinct birds. I want especially to combat the idea that they are extinct because of being 'evolutionary dead ends'. People know about the Dodo and because of its funny appearance think it must have been an awkward, poorly-adapted thing, and consequently fit – or unfit – for an abrupt end. In truth the dodo was very well adapted to its place and its way of life; only when humans came and drastically changed the conditions, primarily by bringing in mammalian predators that never lived on Mauritius before, was it no longer well-adapted. Every living thing can only live within a certain spectrum of living conditions, ourselves included. And we have proved ourselves capable of messing up just about everything. We are changing the Earth and pushing many of our fellow living species into the abyss of extinction. But we ourselves might be headed down the same path. We, too, can only survive within certain environmental parameters. True, we are more adaptable than almost every other living thing, but we are not all-powerful. Our existence on this planet has been very, very brief … and might end soon. An average mammal species of our size can exist for one or two million years. Modern Homo sapiens has been around for only a couple of hundred thousand years. Our technological civilization has existed for only a couple of hundred years. At the rate we're using up resources and polluting, do you think we, in our 'civilized' form, is going to make it to a million?

But back to birds. Another bird that is very, very likely extinct by now, is the Javanese Wattled Lapwing, Vanellus macropterus. Lapwings, sometimes called plovers along with other members of the Charadriidae family, are ground-living birds found in open landscapes such as grasslands or wetlands all over the world except in Antarctica. They are comparatively long-legged and usually have bold plumage patterns. Several species have colourful wattles on their faces. The Javanese lapwing had particularly large, bright-yellow wattles. Among living lapwing species, only the Masked Lapwing of Australia, and the White-headed Lapwing of Africa, have comparably large wattles. In addition to its wattles, the Javanese lapwing had a bold plumage pattern: black head, greyish-brown body, black wing feathers, black belly, white undertail and black-and-white tail. Its legs and feet were yellow, and it stood about 30 cm/1' tall. Like some other lapwings, it had sharp spurs on its 'shoulders' … actually the area corresponding to our wrists. It looked unlike any other lapwing; it was a very unique species and thus a substantial loss for the Earth's bird diversity.

This lapwing, as you might guess, occurred on the large Indonesian island of Java. There is a possibility that it also occurred on the islands of Sumatra and Timor. It lived in open areas close to water such as swamps or the margins of lakes and ponds. It is likely that it lived like other lapwings, walking over its territory and pecking food and animal items from the ground. The spurs on its wings were likely useful for defense against predators, or in vying for mates or territory. They would have made their nests on the ground, likely very inconspicuously, bare scrapes amidst tufts of grass or small stones where the eggs with their speckled and blotched coloration would have been well-camouflaged. Like other lapwings, the parents would likely have protected their eggs by trying to lure predators away, or by flying up and 'dive-bombing' them while screeching loudly. The chicks would have hatched open-eyed, covered in down, and already able to walk and run with their disproportionately long legs. Their parents would not actively feed them, but direct their attention to food items which they could then peck up themselves. While some lapwings, especially those living in the colder parts of Europe and Asia, are migratory, the Javanese lapwing seems to have stayed in the same area year-round.

We can more or less guess the above, but with no actual birds to study, we might be wrong. There might be subtle or striking ways in which its way of life would have differed from those of its surviving relatives. That's the problem with extinction. When it's happened, there's nothing more to be learned.

So how and why did this lapwing become extinct? Or is it extinct indeed? These lapwings declined primarily from habitat destruction and from being hunted for food. Today Java is a very densely populated island. That not only means that much wild countryside has been destroyed, but also that there are very many eyes to see lapwings with, if they were there. Because lapwings are conspicuous birds living in open environments, they are easy to spot. And none of these lapwings have been reliably seen since 1940. There have been 'unconfirmed reports' of the species in 2013. The problem is that people not experienced in birdwatching (and sometimes even those) can confuse species with each other. So, we cannot be really sure that these sightings were indeed of this species. Ideally we should get photos. But the chances of us getting any of those now don't appear to be good. There are a few patches of possibly-suitable habitat that haven't yet been surveyed, but these couldn't host anything but very small and likely not-viable-over-the-long-term populations. At the moment the species is classified as critically endangered, likely extinct. But if it weren't for us, it would still be out there, still a part of the landscape, still a component of the tapestry of life on Earth.

Willem

05.10.20 Front Page

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