Heather
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Heather Grouse ( Tympanuchus cupido cupido ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Tympanuchus cupido cupido | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The heather grouse ( Tympanuchus cupido cupido ), sometimes referred to as the cupido chicken , was a distinctive subspecies of the prairie chicken ( Tympanuchus cupido ), a large North American bird in the pheasant-like family . It may also have been a species in its own right.
In historical times, heather chickens were widespread in the bush-covered, barren heaths of the coastal region of New England , from the southernmost tip of New Hampshire to northern Virginia, and in prehistoric times possibly as far as Florida . The prairie chickens, on the other hand, inhabit prairies from Texas north to Indiana to North Dakota and South Dakota . In earlier times the distribution area extended into central-southern Canada .
Heather chickens were extremely common in their habitat during colonialism . They were hunted extensively as a source of food. In fact, many experts suspect that the dinner of the Pilgrim Fathers for Thanksgiving not wild turkeys existed, but from Heide chickens. In the late 18th century, the heather had a reputation as an inexpensive and abundant "poor people's food".
description
The heather grouse looked very similar to the great prairie chicken, but it was slightly smaller ( Pearson 1917 ). The length of the bird was approximately 43 centimeters and the weight was 900 grams.
die out
As a result of enormous hunting pressure, the population quickly fell. Possibly in the 1840s, but in any case by 1870, the heather had disappeared on the mainland. There were only 300 left on the island of Martha's Vineyard, off Massachusetts , but by 1890 that number had dropped to 120 to 200 birds, mainly due to cat prey and poaching. In the late 19th century there were 70 copies left. These were now protected by a strict hunting ban and in 1908 the "Heath Hen Reserve" (now called Manuel F. Correllus State Forest ) was established. By the mid-1910s, the population rose to almost 2,000 birds and their courtship arenas became a tourist attraction. However, a devastating fire during the 1916 breeding season, severe winters, inbreeding, an excess of males and histomoniasis pathogens (blackhead) apparently introduced by poultry caused the population to collapse. After a final recovery in 1920 to 600 specimens, the population began its final decline. In 1927 only a dozen heather had survived, only two of them females. At the end of 1927, despite the best protective measures, only five specimens remained, all of them males. After December 8, 1928, apparently only one male survived ( Gross, 1931 ), nicknamed “Booming Ben”. He was last seen early in the breeding season on March 11, 1932 in his ancestral mating arena between West Tisbury and what is now Martha's Vineyard Airport and died under unexplained circumstances just hours or days later at the age of about eight.
Between 1928 and 1931 the ornithologist Alfred Otto Gross shot a fourteen-minute silent documentary (with subtitles ) about the observation and ringing of "Booming Ben" on Martha's Vineyard.
Heather chickens were among the first species of birds that Americans wanted to protect. As early as 1791, a bill "for the protection of heather and other game" was presented to the New York Parliament. Although efforts to save the heather grouse from extinction were ultimately unsuccessful, they paved the way for the conservation of other bird species. Ironically, the establishment of reserves in what became known as the Great Plains may have accelerated the heather grouse extinction. Fires were usually part of the environment, but trying to suppress fires rather than using controlled fire succession decreased the quality of the habitat and a normally limited fire had devastating consequences on the accumulated undergrowth, as in 1916.
Systematics
The taxonomic discussion has launched some research projects to find out more about the heather and its habitat. A first comparison of mtDNA - haplotypes between Heidehuhn- and prairie chicken types ( . Palkovacs et al, 2004 ) brought the unexpected result that all tested heath hens formed a group that is very different from the mainland birds and prairie chickens from the Great Wisconsin genetically very similar were . A recent study ( Johnson & Dunn, 2006 ) on the same parameters confirmed the results, but disagreed with the heather grouse's placement in relation to its kin, and suggested a closer relationship with the prairie chicken instead . Johnson and Dunn warned against interpreting too much into the results: while the prairie chicken is an independent species and the heather grouse, which is apparently equally different genetically, would therefore also deserve an independent status, mtDNA haplotypes in small populations go through a genetic bottleneck and probably show a higher deviation than can be assessed solely from the taxonomic status ( Johnson et al., 2003 ). Given the fact that all of the heather grouse examined by Johnson and Dunn came from Martha's Vineyard Island - where the population never exceeded a few thousand birds because of limited space and where genetic exchanges with the mainland were limited - so it is possible that the heather grouse's low genetic diversity and apparent distinctiveness was an artifact of a small number of usable specimens from the same close-knit population.
Prairie chickens were introduced indiscriminately to the east coast of the United States after the heather grouse became extinct on the mainland. However, they couldn't hold out. There are significant numbers of heather hides in public collections today, but many - all of the mainland specimens and those with insufficient information - cannot be clearly identified as heather. For example, only seven unique heather eggs are known in public collections today. This corresponds to a very small clutch ( Luther , 1996).
literature
- Cokinos, Christopher (2000): The Heath-hen In: Hope is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds : 121-196. Tarcher. ISBN 1-58542-006-9
- Forbush, Edward Howe (1927): Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States volume II : 40. Massachusetts Department of Agriculture.
- Greenway, James C. (1967): Heath-hens and Prairie Chickens. In: Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, 2nd edition : 188-199. Dover Publications, New York.
- Gross, Alfred O. (1931): Banding the Last Heath Hen. Bird-Banding 2 (3): 99-105. PDF full text
- Johnson, Jeff A .; Toepfer, JE & Dunn, Peter O. (2003): Contrasting patterns of mitochondrial and microsatellite population structure in fragmented populations of greater prairie-chickens. Molecular Ecology 12 (12): 3335-47. doi : 10.1046 / j.1365-294X.2003.02013.x PDF full text ( Memento from May 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- Johnson, Jeff A. & Dunn, Peter O. (2006): Low genetic variation in the Heath Hen prior to extinction and implications for the conservation of prairie-chicken populations. Conservation Genetics 7 : 37-48. doi : 10.1007 / s10592-005-7856-8
- Luther, Dieter (1996): Prairie Chicken. In: The extinct birds of the world, 4th edition (Die neue Brehm-Bücherei 424 ) : 51-54. [in German] Westarp Sciences, Magdeburg; Spectrum, Heidelberg. ISBN 3-89432-213-6
- Palkovacs, Eric P .; Oppenheimer, Adam J .; Gladyshev, Eugene; Toepfer, John E .; Amato, George; Chase, Thomas & Caccone, Adalgisa (2004): Genetic evaluation of a proposed introduction: The case of the greater prairie chicken and the extinct heath hen. Molecular Ecology 13 : 1759-1769. doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-294X.2004.02181.x (HTML abstract)
- Pearson, T. Gilbert (1917). Birds of America volume II : 26. The University Society. (Reprinted 1936, Garden City Publishing Co.)
- Schroeder, MA & Robb, LA (1993) Greater prairie-chicken. In: Poole, A .; Stettenheim, P. & Gill, F. (editors): The Birds of North America 36 . The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, DC.
Web links
- Birds of a Very Different Feather - Article by Tom Dunlop, Martha's Vineyard Magazine, Sep / Oct, 2004.
- All About Birds - Heath Hen
- Film The Heath Hen by Alfred O. Gross (MP4 video, 14 min)