The black mamo (''Drepanis funerea''), also known as the hoa, is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

once

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to the island of

Molokai Molokai , or Molokai (), is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its greatest length an ...

; there is also

subfossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

evidence of it having lived on

Maui The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...

Description

It measured 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 ''Lobelia'' () is a genus of flowering plants comprising 415 species, with a subcosmopolitan distribution primarily in tropical to warm temperate regions of the world, a few species extending into cooler temperate regions.Huxley, A., ed. (1992 ...

''. The mamo's 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 Perkins'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 of 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 William Alanson Bryan (23 December 1875 - 18 June 1942) was an American zoologist, ornithologist, naturalist and museum director. Life and work Bryan was born on a farm in New Sharon, Iowa. After his education, and his zoology studies, he gradu ...

Tim Flannery Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, Conservation biology, conservationist, Exploration, explorer, author, Science communication, science communicator, activist and p ...

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 Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

References

Cited sources

*
Extinct Birds of Hawaii
*Tim Flannery &

Peter Schouten Peter Mark Schouten is an Australian artist and illustrator of publications in the field of zoology and palaeontology. David Attenborough termed his skills as "rare and precious" and among the world's best. His works are characterized by natu ...

, ''A Gap in Nature'',

External links

Species factsheet
- BirdLife International {{Taxonbar, from=Q790609 Endemic birds of Hawaii Extinct birds of Hawaii Drepanis Bird extinctions since 1500 Birds described in 1893 Biota of Molokai Taxonomy articles created by Polbot