THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

There were once flightless owls in Crete and a giant flightless swan Sicily and Malta, but both were killed as soon as people landed on those islands.  The black Canary Islands oystercatcher, last seen for certain by lighthousemen on the Isla de Lobos north of Fuerteventura in the 1940s; four small island petrels, one from the Canaries, two from St Helena and a nocturnal one from Jamaica; three shearwaters, one from Majorca and two from the Canaries: all have disappeared from the Atlantic world. But the great auk remains the King of the Lost.

Nicolson/Seabird