Acrocephalus familiaris familiaris Rothschild, 1892
Millerbird, Miller bird, Laysan millerbird, Laysan warbler, Hawaiian reed-warbler
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonym/s: Tartare familiaris Rothschild, 1892 (original combination)
Conservation Status
Extinct (WCMC, 1992:212; BirdLife International, 2023; NatureServe, 2026)
Last record: 1916 (April 1923?); 1912-1923 (WCMC, 1992:212)
IUCN RedList status: Extinct
Distribution & Habitat
Laysan, Hawaiian Islands, USA
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Seven specimens are in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History "all...collected in June 1891 by Henry Palmer" (LeCroy, 2008). Rothschild (1892) did did not designate a type specimen, and so no holotype exists. Hartert (1920) remedied this situation by allocating a lectotype, and thereby creating six paralectotypes.
Lectotype: AMNH 594841 (adult male)
Paralectotypes:
AMNH 594842 (male)
AMNH 594843 (male)
AMNH 594844 (male)
AMNH 594845 (female)
AMNH 594846 (female)
AMNH 594847 (sex unspecified)
Media
Above: taken by Walker K. Fisher in 1902. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
References
Original scientific description:
Rothschild, Walter. (1892). Descriptions of seven new species of birds from the Sandwich Islands. Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (ser. 6) 10: 108-112.
Other references:
American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). 1957. The AOU check-list of North American birds, 5th ed. Port City Press, Inc., Baltimore, MD. 691 pp.
American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). 1983. Check-list of North American Birds, 6th edition. Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, Kansas. 877 pp.
Berger, A. J. 1981. Hawaiian Birdlife. Second Edition. University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii. xv + 260 pp.
BirdLife International. (2012). Acrocephalus familiaris. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.1. (http://www.iucnredlist.org). Downloaded on 29 July 2012.
BirdLife International. 2023. Acrocephalus familiaris. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T22714797A222786975. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2023-1.RLTS.T22714797A222786975.en. Accessed on 03 October 2026.
Cibois, A., J.S. Beadel, G.R. Graves, , E. Pasquet, B. Slikas, S.A. Sonsthagen, J.-C. Thibault, and R.C. Fleischer. (2011). Charting the course of reed-warblers across the Pacific islands. Journal of Biogeography 38: 1963-1975.
Courtney-Haines, Lawrence M. (1991). A Cabinet of Reed-Warblers: A Monograph Dealing with the Acrocephaline Warblers of the World, and Embracing All Known Species ans Sub-species. Chipping Norton, NSW: Surrey Beatty & Sons. xvii + 95 pp.
Day, David. (1981). The Doomsday Book of Animals: A Natural History of Vanished Species. New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press.
Ehrlich, Paul R., Dobkin, David S. and Wheye, Darryl. (1992). Birds in Jeopardy: The Imperiled and Extinct Birds of the United States and Canada, Including Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 259 pp.
Elphick, Chris S., Roberts, David L. and Reed, J. Michael. (2010). Estimated dates of recent extinctions for North American and Hawaiian birds. Biological Conservation 143: 617-624.
Hartert, Ernest. (1920). Types of birds in the Tring Museum. B. Types in the general collection (contd.). Novitates Zoologicae 17: 425–505.
Knox, Alan G. and Walters, Michael P. (1994). Extinct and endangered birds in the collections of The Natural History Museum. British Ornithologists' Club Occasional Publications 1: 1-292. [p. 214]
LeCroy, Mary. (2008). Type specimens of birds in the American Museum of Natural History. Part 7, Passeriformes: Sylviidae, Muscicapidae, Platysteiridae, Maluridae, Acanthizidae, Monarchidae, Rhipiduridae, and Petroicidae. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Number 313, 287 pp.
Matthews, Thomas J., Wayman, Joseph P., Cardoso, Pedro, Sayol, Ferran, Hume, Julian P., Ulrich, Werner, Tobias, Joseph A., Soares, Filipa C., Thébaud, Christophe, Martin, Thomas E. and Triantis, Kostas A. (2022). Threatened and extinct island endemic birds of the world: Distribution, threats and functional diversity. Journal of Biogeography 49(11): 1920-1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14474 [Appendix S1 (.docx); Appendix S2 (.pdf)]
Morin, M. P., S. Conant, and P. Conant. 1997. Laysan and Nihoa Millerbird (Acrocephalus familiaris). In A. Poole and F. Gill, editors, The Birds of North America, No. 302. The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, DC. 20 pp.
Munro, George C. (1960). Birds of Hawaii, revised edition. Rutland, Vermont: Turtle and Co. Inc.
NatureServe. (2026). Acrocephalus familiaris familiaris: Laysan Millerbird. NatureServe Network Biodiversity Location Data accessed through NatureServe Explorer [web application]. NatureServe, Arlington, Virginia. Available at: https://explorer.natureserve.org/ [Accessed on 3 October 2026]
Olson, S. L. (1996). History and ornithological journals of the TANAGER Expedition of 1923 to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Johnston and Wake Islands. Atoll Research Bulletin No. 433.
Roberts, D. L. and Jarić, I. (2016). Inferring extinction in North American and Hawaiian birds in the presence of sighting uncertainty. PeerJ 4: e2426.
WCMC (World Conservation Monitoring Centre). (1992). Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's living resources. London: Chapman & Hall. xx + 594 pp.