10 THE 
“Local people must, 
at once, undertake 
to preserve local 
habitats.” 
AUDUBON BULGE TEN 
engineers—all the robots who annually lurch 
forth to recommend the beauties of commerce— 
lately have been reprogrammed to propose their 
schemes when the land lies wintry and leafless 
and the birds are absent. Mechanical voices, blip- 
ping and clanging out of committee rooms, simply 
fail to sound quite sane with birds singing in the 
background. Aware of this, now, at least dimly, 
the promoting contigent tends in spring to creak 
into silence, lapse, and rust and wait. It will be 
worth watching to see the extent to which the 
“islands” in America are doomed by decisions 
made henceforth between October and March. 
Few bird extinctions have occured on con- 
tinents. Americans, however, will be well advised 
to forget that curiosity in order to meditate on 
another: namely, that ours is the only nation on 
earth whose citizens have wiped out mainland 
species—the Carolina Parakeet and Passenger 
Pigeon being two examples, and the Ivory-billed 
Woodpecker a probable third. What Americans 
have managed to destroy on islands, as in the 
Hawalian group, also furnishes rich material for 
reflection. The degree and rate of habitat des- 
truction and bird extinction in the 49th state has 
no equal in history, as shown by the following 
list of bird extinctions in Hawaiian Island Chain: 
Laysan Island Rail, Hawaiian Rail, Oahu Thrush, 
Laysan Millerbird, Oahu Island O-o, lLaysan 
Honeyeater, Ula-ai-hawane, Ou, Mamo, Koa Finch, 
and Oahu Nukupuu. 
Some 10 other Hawaiian forms are almost 
certainly extinct, and still others are rare and 
vanishing. 
If there exists in this record a foreshadowng 
of preservaton of avian habitats in Illinois, or in 
any other state, it escapes me. 
My own conviction is that local people must 
at once undertake the task of preserving local 
habitats, particularly the residual spots used by 
non-game, locally-scarce species. 
“Locally scarce’”—the emphatic phrase here— 
applies to all Red-Listed Illinois birds, each of 
which should be placed under state protection, 
and its habitats set aside without regard to the 
bird’s status elsewhere. To protect, assuring per- 
petuation of, an Illinois population of what may 
be a common species in another region is to safe- 
guard a state legacy at the very least. 
A small Illinois colony of Yellow-headed 
