Lost Bird Project

Once, flocks of over 1 billion passenger pigeons darkened the skies for days. By 1900, a 14-year-old boy shot the last one. How did this happen?

The Lost Bird Project is a documentary about the stories of five birds driven to extinction in modern times and sculptor Todd McGrain's project to memorialize them. The film follows McGrain as he searches for the locations where the birds were last seen in the wild and negotiates for permission to install his large bronze sculptures there.

McGrain's aim in placing the sculptures is to give presence to the birds where they are now so starkly absent. "These birds are not commonly known," he says, "and they ought to be, because forgetting is another kind of extinction. It's such a thorough erasing."

The film is an elegy to the five birds and a thoughtful and sometimes humorous look at the artist and his mission. Lost Birds is a film about public art, extinction and memory.

http://lostbirdproject.org