The Red Siskin and the SRCS - Part 1

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1 day ago
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Here are two interconnected stories.

Part One is about a small red bird, native to Venezuela, driven to the edge of extinction by 100 years of changing European hobbies and fashions.

Part Two is about a group of friends from South Rupununi, Guyana, the discovery that changed their lives and the future of the Red Siskin.

Red Siskin (Spinus Cucullatus)

Here is the male red siskin, only 10g in weight, and as tiny as a teaspoon. His breast is brilliant orange-red, and his singing voice is a melodious and varied trill.

Prior to the late 19th century, red siskins were a common bird in northern Venezuela and parts of Columbia. On the IUCN map below they are shown as 'possibly extinct' throughout almost all of their former range.

Siskins survive 'Feather Fever'

As with so many birds, the little siskins were a victim of their own beauty and song. From the late 1800s, large numbers of birds were caught and shipped to Europe and North America, destined to become caged singing birds for wealthy homeowners. At the same time, the red breast feathers were appreciated as part of salmon flies for fly fishing.

Then 'feather fever' swept through North America and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Thousands of women paid for feathers, and indeed whole birds, to be mounted on their hats and clothes. The real fashionistas were not wearing plumage from their own country - they were adorned with Toucans and Quetzals from South America, Birds of Paradise from New Guinea and Red Siskins from Venezuela. It is difficult for us to imagine the scale and impact of this fashion on global bird populations - one hundred million pounds of feathers were imported into France alone in the 1870s-1890s. To give you an idea of the value of these feathers, by 1900 it was becoming so difficult to source the most desired birds that Snowy Egret plumes were worth 50% more than gold, by weight.

Feather fever inspired one Emily Williamson to found a small group called the Society for the Protection of Birds - later the RSPB. The abolition of the feather trade was their first success.

Dream of a Red Canary

But the red siskin, having survived the fashion of one century, was almost destroyed by a fantasy of the next: Eugenics.

In Pre-Second World War Germany, a professor and a storekeeper were fascinated by the idea of using genetic engineering to create a new species: the world's first red canary.

The canary in its original natural form is a nondescript dull green. Queen Elizabeth I was said to have been unimpressed when presented with a cage of them in the 1580s.... until she heard them sing. Undeterred, canary fanciers selectively bred the birds for hundreds of years to create bright yellow and even white canaries.

But German canary fanciers believed it was possible that a red canary could be created - by cross breeding a white canary female with a red siskin male.

They realised that, as finches, red siskins were closely enough related to canaries to permit successful cross breeding. They would pick the reddest of the offspring, then breed it (back cross) with another white canary, pick the reddest, and breed again. By selecting for red colour, but continuing to bring in more and more canary genetics, they would eventually make a red canary.

It didn't work. Mediocre copper-coloured birds were the best they could do.

But the bird fanciers did not give up. From the 1940s, huge numbers of red siskins were caught in the wild and shipped over to Europe and North America to fuel the new canary craze. Again and again they produced grey or copperish birds. And rapidly, wild red siskin numbers were falling.

What they didn't realise, what their obsession with genetic determination would not allow them to see, was that the redness present in the genes would not be fully expressed without the correct environmental interaction. In other words, they had to feed the birds red food to make them red.

But was it all too late for the wild red siskin?

Underground Trade

Relentless trade in red siskins had decimated the wild population. Venezuela's government outlawed its trade in the 1940s - the first time a bird had ever been given legal protection. But the trade went underground and even placing the siskin on the first CITES Appendix I list in 1975 did not slow it.

Nothing helped. By the turn of the century, there were only a few hundred birds left in the wild, making it one of the most endangered birds in the world.