Thread by @PhilBoyleFCO

Visiting #LaReunion allowed for a very special adventure with my 8-month old son. We wanted to see one of the rarest birds in the world before it disappeared: the Reunion Cuckoo-shrike.

This is a thread about #birds, #birding, fatherhood, #biodiversity and #extinction ... 1/13

@Team_eBird @BirdLife_News @BirdWatchingMag @Natures_Voice @WildlifeMag @Britnatureguide @RareBirdAlertUK @extinctsymbol @BirdNoteRadio 2. What does #extinction mean? What does it feel like? How does our species internalise, let alone rationalise, the loss of another?

Perhaps, like the Universe itself, the #anthropocene sixth mass extinction is too big, too abstract, just too *much*, for us to absorb.

@Team_eBird @BirdLife_News @BirdWatchingMag @Natures_Voice @WildlifeMag @Britnatureguide @RareBirdAlertUK @extinctsymbol @BirdNoteRadio 3. So let's focus on just one species: a bird few have heard of, and fewer would likely think or care about. A type of cuckoo-shrike found only on #Reunion, the next-door island to my home in #Madagascar.

A bird from an island where avian extinctions have already occurred.

4. Recent fatherhood focuses the mind.

#Extinction has always inspired feelings of sadness and powerlessness, but the tragedy dawns that this bird could be gone before my baby son can grow enough to walk the trail by himself.

So we'll try to find it now.

5. According to @IUCN @SpeciesSavers, the Reunion Cuckoo-shrike has around 66 individuals left, with mature adults in decline. This makes it one of the 🌍's 50 most endangered birds.

It's now found in just one patch of forest on one small island.

iucnredlist.org/species/227065…

@IUCN @SpeciesSavers 6. Predation by feral cats and rats has had a devastating effect. This bird - the Tuit-Tuit, in Creole - is on the edge.

But hard #conservation work by the Société d’Etudes Ornithologiques de la Réunion (SEOR) and others has improved the numbers.

ipreunion.com/actualites-reu…

7. We were unlikely to actually *find* the Tuit-Tuit, of course. It's just too rare.

But it felt important to try. A secular pilgrimage for an obscure bird that few globally will miss, but the loss of which will nevertheless be an impoverishment of, and judgement upon, humanity.

8. The last patch of habitat for the Reunion Cuckoo-shrike is the forest around the Roche Ecrite massif.

We ascended through beautiful, lush panoramas.

We stopped frequently, willing a call from one of the 30ish remaining males.

But there was silence.

9. Other birds on #Reunion are doing well, and as we climbed we spied the endemic Bulbul, Olive White-Eye, Paradise Flycatcher (Reunion ssp), Stonechat and Grey White-Eye.

These #birds aren't found anywhere else on 🌍 apart from this tiny island. #biodiversity

10. The flip side of pessimism about mass extinction is the joy that that endemic species on small islands can still thrive given a bit of due consideration and conservation.

So my son might get to show them to his kids too.

#ConservationOptimism

11. Tuit! Tuit! It can't be. Surely no-one *actually* sees the Reunion Cuckooshrike?

Tuit! Tuit! A flash of grey-blue feathers seems to confirm it.

The baby wails in, what I like to think of, deep appreciation of his first rare bird sighting. #EmbarrasingDad

12. This adventure was always about the journey rather than the destination. A father-son trip to pay homage to something that soon may not be. A #lastchancetosee.

To have a sense of how extinction might feel. To see it through a future generation's eyes.

13/13. The defining features of all our kids' futures will be #ClimateEmergency and #MassExtinction. Adults have the grim task of educating them about those things. And I'm starting early.

But, happily, for this one little cuckoo-shrike, at least for now, there is still hope.