Black beach bunting

Black beach bunting
	Orange Ribbon , the last black beach hammer
Systematics
Order :	Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination :	Songbirds (passeri)
Family :	New World Chambers (Passerellidae)
Genre :	Ammospiza
Type :	Beach bunting ( Ammospiza maritima )
Subspecies :	Black beach bunting
Scientific name
	Ammospiza maritima nigrescens
	( Ridgway , 1873)

The black beach bunting ( Ammospiza maritima nigrescens ) is an extinct subspecies of the beach bunting within the family of the New World bunting .

description

The black beach bunting reached a length of 15 centimeters. The top was lined with black and gray olive. The belly was white with noticeable black stripes. The reins were light yellow. The tail and wings were black with pale olive-yellow fringes.

The sexes looked the same.

distribution and habitat

The original distribution reached from New England to southern Florida and west to the Gulf Coast. Displaced by the use of DDT , the last 894 couples had lived in the salt marshes and savannahs of Merritt Island and the St. Johns National Wildlife Refuge in Brevard County , Florida since the 1950s .

Way of life

The black beach bunting was a resident bird . The breeding season was from March to August. The eggs were hatched in 12 to 13 days and the young were cared for by both parents for 9 days. The young birds spent another two weeks in their parents' territory before they were driven away by the males. The first moult was in late August and in November the young birds got their adult plumage. The black beachhammer lived on grasshoppers , crickets and arachnids .

die out

The decline of the Black Strandhammer began in 1942 by the containment of the marshes , the drainage of the floodplains and controlled bushfires . The use of DDT to control mosquitoes wiped out 70% of the beach bunting population, so that by 1953 only 894 couples had survived. Measures to protect the black beach bunting, such as the establishment of the St. John's National Wildlife Refuge, failed, so that by 1963 only 70 couples remained. In 1969 only 35 pairs were found. In 1975 the last female was observed and in 1979 there were only 6 specimens left. In 1986 there was only one male named "Orange Band" that was blind in one eye. It died in human care on June 18, 1987 at Walt Disney World Resort . On December 12, 1990, the black beach hammer was officially declared "extinct".

literature

Walton Beacham: World Wildlife Fund Guide to Extinct Species of Modern Times . 1997, ISBN 0-933833-40-7 .
Mark Jerome Walters: A shadow and a song: the struggle to save an endangered species . Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992, ISBN 978-0-930031-58-9 .