The wood harrier or mime harrier (''Circus dossenus'') 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 ...

bird of prey which lived in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

during the

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

. This small, short-winged harrier inhabited the forests 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 ...

and

Oahu Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...

where it presumably hunted for small birds and insects.

Description

When compared to extant species of the genus ''Circus'', the wood harrier was a small harrier. It had rather short wings but long legs and was even outsized by the small

pied harrier The pied harrier (''Circus melanoleucos'') is an Asian species of bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. It is migratory, breeding from the Amur valley in eastern Russia and north-eastern China to North Korea. Wintering individuals can be foun ...

and

Montagu's harrier Montagu's harrier (''Circus pygargus'') is a migratory bird of prey of the harrier family. Its common name commemorates the British naturalist George Montagu. Taxonomy The first formal description of Montagu's harrier was by the Swedish na ...

.Olson & James 1991, p. 67

Habitat

The habitat of the wood harrier consisted of forests, where it hunted for insects or small birds such as

honeycreepers The typical honeycreepers form a genus ''Cyanerpes'' of small birds in the tanager family Thraupidae. They are found in the tropical New World from Mexico south to Brazil. They occur in the forest canopy, and, as the name implies, they are specia ...

, since there were no terrestrial mammals before the arrival of the

Polynesians Polynesians form an ethnolinguistic group of closely related people who are native to Polynesia (islands in the Polynesian Triangle), an expansive region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Sou ...

in Hawaii. Due to its habitat which is unusual for harriers and because of its small prey, it developed shorter wings and a smaller body (rather resembling an '' Accipiter'' or the stilt owls ''

Grallistrix The stilt-owls (''Grallistrix'') is an extinct genus of true owls which contains four species, all of which lived on the Hawaiian Islands. ''Grallistrix'' can be loosely translated as "owl on stilts". The genus received this name due to the lon ...

''), making it a typical example of insular dwarfism.

Distribution

The wood harrier was presumably restricted to the islands of

and

, since there are no records from other Hawaiian islands. It probably became extinct due to habitat degradation and the introduction of the

Pacific rat The Polynesian rat, Pacific rat or little rat (''Rattus exulans''), known to the Māori as ''kiore'', is the third most widespread species of rat in the world behind the brown rat and black rat. The Polynesian rat originated in Southeast Asia, an ...

by early

. Since the wood harrier was most likely a ground breeder, it might have been affected severely by the colonization of Hawaii.

Discovery and taxonomy

In 1981,

Helen F. James Helen Frances James (born May 22, 1956) is an American paleontology, paleontologist and paleornithology, paleornithologist who has published extensively on the fossil birds of the Hawaiian Islands. She is the Curator, curator in charge of birds ...

and her husband

Storrs L. Olson Storrs Lovejoy Olson (April 3, 1944 – January 20, 2021) was an American biologist and ornithologist who spent his career at the Smithsonian Institution, retiring in 2008. One of the world's foremost avian paleontologists, he was best known ...

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 A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclist ...

''. 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 harrier The northern harrier (''Circus hudsonius''), or ring-tailed hawk, is a bird of prey. It breeds throughout the northern parts of the northern hemisphere in Canada and the northernmost USA. The northern harrier migrates to more southerly areas ...

s in Hawaii so that the evolution of a Hawaiian species of harrier would indeed seem plausible.Olson & James 1991, p. 85

References

Bibliography

''Descriptions of thirty-two new Species of Birds from the Hawaiian Islands.''
In: ''Ornithological Monographs'' 45, pp. 65–85, 1991. {{Taxonbar, from=Q1419442

wood harrier The wood harrier or mime harrier (''Circus dossenus'') is an extinct bird of prey which lived in Hawaii during the Holocene. This small, short-winged harrier inhabited the forests of Molokai and Oahu where it presumably hunted for small birds a ...

Endemic birds of Hawaii Holocene extinctions Late Quaternary prehistoric birds Extinct birds of Hawaii Biota of Oahu Biota of Molokai Endemic fauna of Hawaii