On Guam there is no birdsong, you cannot imagine the trauma of a silent island [theguardian.com]
By Julian Aguon, Illustration: Kate Nolan/The Guardian, The Guardian, October 31, 2022 For about as long as I’ve been alive, there have been no sihek on the island of Guam . The sihek, or the Guam kingfisher, is a beautiful blue-gold songbird that’s been extirpated in the wild since the 1980s. Like most of Guam’s native birds – 10 out of 12 native species – the sihek rapidly declined after the introduction of the invasive brown tree snake brought to the island after the second world war as a...