Data Zone
Justification of Red List category
This species was known from Russia's Komandorski Islands, but is now Extinct: the last records date from the 1840s and the species is thought to have been lost by the early 1850s. Hunting was the primary cause of its extinction.
Population justification
None remain.
Urile perspicillatus was restricted to Bering Island in the Komandorski Islands, Russia (Greenway 1967), and possibly the adjacent coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula (Siegel-Causey et al. 1991). Steller noted that it was common in 1741, but its breeding islands were colonised by people in 1826 and all five known specimens were collected between 1840-1850; in 1882, Stejneger was told by the island's residents that the last birds had disappeared about 30 years before (Greenway 1967).
It inhabited rocky coasts and fed in adjacent seas.
It was a poor flier (Livezey 1992) and was heavily hunted for food by the Aleuts from the 1820s onward (Hume 2017).
Text account compilers
Vine, J.
Contributors
Ashpole, J, Brooks, T., Khwaja, N. & Mahood, S.
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Species factsheet: Spectacled Cormorant Urile perspicillatus. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/spectacled-cormorant-urile-perspicillatus on 22/12/2024.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2024) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/search on 22/12/2024.