Extinct

I have much of the day free in London since the old man likes to follow his customary pursuits of sifting and sorting, browsing and dozing.
When I'm in no hurry I like to travel around by bus, preferably in the front seat of the top deck which was what I got today. I took a long ride east from Euston Road, plunging through the concrete canyons of Pentonville, Angel, Shoreditch and Aldgate, past glossy, glassy shards and cubes, past jaded shops and faded churches, tattered hoardings and shattered windows, all the way to Whitechapel Road. Searching past the Asian market stalls, the gleaming East London mosque and the almost-derelict hulk of the Royal London Hospital, I found what I was seeking, this solitary bird painted on the end of a festering row of terraced houses, beside a little grubby car-parked wasteland at the junction of New Road (new a couple of centuries ago).
It's a Great Bustard, a huge bird once common in England but hunted to extinction, the last one was shot in 1832. An artist who goes by the tag ATM has been painting bird murals in unexpected places as a way of remembering the natural environment and its wild life lost under urban sprawl and to draw attention to the dwindling populations of so many birds whose habitats continue to be endangered. A friend drew my attention to this ornithological art work when he captured a hen harrier in an unexpected location recently, and there's an article about the project here.

Attempts are being made to re-introduce the great bustard to Salisbury Plain where it once flourished but it remains vulnerable to people with guns. I'm reminded of course of the fate of the passenger pigeon in North America whose migrating flocks once darkened the sky for days on end and whose flesh provided richly desirable eating. The sad story of their final demise in the early years on the 20th century is vividly recounted in the book A Feathered River Across the Sky which was given to me by Guinea Pig Zero recently.