A comprehensive and fully updated review of the hundreds of bird species that have become extinct over the last 1,000 years of habitat degradation, over-hunting and rat introduction.

Extinct Birds is a unique and comprehensive review of the hundreds of the bird species and subspecies that have become extinct over the last 1,000 years of habitat degradation, over-hunting and rat introduction. Now in its third edition, it remains the standard text on this subject, covering both familiar icons of extinction as well as more obscure birds, some known from just one specimen or from travellers' tales alone.

This new edition has been both fully updated, and expanded to include dozens of new species that have been discovered and described over the last decade, some through documented extinction, others through exciting subfossil discoveries. It also includes colour art of some of the birds by the book's author, Julian Hume.

Extinct Birds is the result of Hume's decades of research into both the literature and dusty museum drawers, as well as caves and subfossil deposits. From Greak Auks, Carolina Parakeets and Dodos to the amazing yet almost completely vanished bird radiations of Hawaii and New Zealand via rafts of extinction across the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and elsewhere, this book is both a sumptuous reference and an astounding testament to humanity's devastating impact on wildlife.