Lost Bird Documentary

11/1/2012
You may have noticed a six-foot tall scultpture of a Passenger Pigeon on the front lawn of The Harley School. Once the most abundant land bird in North America, the Passenger Pigeon is now extinct.  

To honor the Passenger Pigeon, The Harley School will screen the film, The Lost Bird Project, which tells the story of the demise of the pigeon and four other bird species driven to extinction in modern times. A public screening of the documentary film will be held on Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. in The Harley School Theater, located at 1981 Clover Street.

Gone and nearly forgotten, the Labrador Duck, Great Auk, Heath Hen, Carolina Parakeet and Passenger Pigeon have left a hole in the American landscape and in our collective memory.  Moved by their stories, sculptor Todd McGrain set out to bring their vanished forms back into the world by permanently placing his elegant, evocative bronze memorials at the location of each bird’s demise.

“These birds are not commonly known and they ought to be, because forgetting is another kind of extinction,” McGrain said. “It’s such a thorough erasing.”

The film tells the story of how these birds came to meet their fates and the journey that leads McGrain from the swamps of Florida, the final roosting ground of the Carolina Parakeet, to a tiny island off the coast of Newfoundland, where some of the last Great Auks made their nests and where the local townspeople still mourn their absence 150 years later.

Students from all grades—nursery to 12—at Harley will participate in activities related to the project, including viewing the film, reading literature about birds, creating art projects and participating in classroom discussions.

On Thursday, Nov. 8 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and on Friday, Nov. 9 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., students, faculty, staff, and parents will be invited to stop by and fold an origami passenger pigeon in the Wilson Gallery at Harley. A film crew will record the children working on their origami birds, as part of another documentary project underway that is filming students all over the country folding passenger pigeons.

For more information visit: http://lostbirdproject.org or follow the project at: http://facebook.com/lostbirdproject