Last Call

The palm tanager calls from his roost on our neighbour’s window awning, a low warble crescendoing into full blown question: “Are you there? Are you there?”

But today, there is no response. So he calls again and again, each pronged refrain picking at my insides till the memory of another bird unspools, settles softly—a dark pool beneath a cloudless night sky.

In 1987, the mating call of the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō, endemic to the island of Kaua‘i, was recorded for the Cornell College of Ornithology¹. That song, ethereal and singular against the backdrop of forest sounds, is all the more haunting because no one will ever hear a living Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō again. The lone troubadour, his ballad recorded for posterity, was the last of his kind.

To my human ears, his song overflows with despair. Did he know that he was the last? Was he confused by the silence that seeped into the void where a potential mate’s answer should have taken wing?

Of course, I am projecting, my knowledge of the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō’s fate and my all-too-human emotions overlaying the simple fact of a bird calling for a mate. And yet, here I am, telling you about it.

It is the least I can do: weave the frayed edges of the bird’s story into the warp and weft of our own mercurial existence. After all, we were the knife that severed it from the tapestry of the living. And not a clean cut either, a sawing away, thread by thread—habitat destruction, avian malaria, the introduction of predators.

They say that before its complete disappearance, the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō retreated to higher ground, seeking refuge in the high-altitude montane forests of the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve². But there is no respite from human development. And so, all that remains of the last surviving member of the Mohoidae family of birds, a lineage that stretched as far back as 15 million years³, is a song, barely there but inescapable once you encounter it—like blood in water.

How else do we assuage our collective guilt, grieve the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō’s loss, if not by telling its story? How else would my daughter, child of an island in an entirely different ocean, know that such a bird existed, her heart expanding with the knowledge of its loneliness and inevitable death?

She is dismayed to learn that the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō is not the only bird lost to us in recent times, this daughter of mine. Her eyes widen when I tell her of the Jamaican Golden Swallow, last sighted forty years ago⁴, and of the Bahamas Nuthatch that disappeared almost as soon as it was declared a new species⁵.

When I play the calls of the Chestnut-bellied Seed Finch or “Bullfinch” and the Grey Seedeater or “Picoplat”, prized songbirds that are no longer heard in our forests and savannahs⁶, her chin falls into cupped hands, as if weighted with despair.

It is difficult to share these things, to watch her grapple with them. Yet there is something to be learnt here by way of the heart. And it is these threads, interwoven with the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō’s story, that take us there—the dark pool, now, a river glistening under moonlight.

In its eddies, swirling around that final silence, there is the glimmer of feathers, the whisper of wings, and the song—buoyant with longing—of a bird calling for its mate.

¹ American Bird Conservancy. (2015, May 18). Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō Song [Video]. YouTube.

² Sather, P. (2024, May 27). Kaua’i ‘Ō‘ō. A-Z Animals.

³ Wikipedia contributors. (2024, May 13). Mohoidae. Wikipedia.

⁴ Donahue, M. (2018, May 1). After a nearly 20-year search, this Jamaican bird is probably extinct. Smithsonian Insider.

⁵ BirdsCaribbean. (2021, July 11). The Caribbean has Two New Bird Species . . Sadly, They May Both be Extinct. Birdscaribbean.org.

⁶ Abdool, F. (2021, October 28). Where have all the songbirds gone?. Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.

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