Vampire finches and deadly tree snakes: how birds went worldwide – and their battles for survival

The Guam rail was one of numerous species of indigenous birds to become extinct on the island last century, thanks to the predation of brown tree snakes. Photograph: Alamy

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.