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 Birds of prey or predatory birds, also known as raptors, are hypercarnivorous bird species that actively hunt and feed on other vertebrates (mainly mammals, reptiles and other smaller birds). In addition to speed and strength, these predat ...

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 togeth ...

. 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 archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its greatest length and width with a us ...

and

Oahu Oahu () ( Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over two-thirds of the population of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The island of O ...

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.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, 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 ''Accipiter'' is a genus of birds of prey in the family Accipitridae. With 51 recognized species it is the most diverse genus in its family. Most species are called goshawks or sparrowhawks, although almost all New World species (excepting th ...

'' 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 Insular dwarfism, a form of phyletic dwarfism, is the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands. This natural process is disti ...

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 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 and her husband Storrs L. Olson first discovered remains of a bird they believed to be an ''

'' 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 unicyclis ...

''. 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

* Storrs L. Olson, Helen F. James
''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 Endemic birds of Hawaii Holocene extinctions Late Quaternary prehistoric birds Extinct birds of Hawaii Biota of Oahu Biota of Molokai Endemic fauna of Hawaii wood harrier wood harrier