A photograph of one of the last surviving Moho braccatus specimens.

Item #: SCP-4340

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Due to the remote and benign nature of SCP-4340, minimal containment procedures are required. The team of researchers that is currently posted on Kauai is to be rotated with new personnel weekly. Researchers are also to receive monthly psychological examinations.

As contact with civilian populations is generally seen to be unavoidable, a webcrawler (I/O-SAURON) has been programmed to flag and remove any mentions of SCP-4340 related phenomena from public internet forums, as well as preventing news media stories relating to the potential survival of Moho braccatus from being published.

Description: SCP-4340 is an auditory phenomenon described as the mating call of a male Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Moho braccatus), a species of bird which is believed to have gone extinct in 1987. It occurs only on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian island chain, only ever having been recorded in remote, forested areas of the island, not being noted to occur within any regions with a permanent civilian population.

Numerous Foundation investigations have conclusively determined that SCP-4340 does not originate from living specimens of Moho braccatus; the calls do not appear to originate from a single physical source at all. This has been corroborated by thermal imagery continuously failing to identify any heat-producing organisms in areas where SCP-4340 is originating from.

Long-term exposure to SCP-4340 has been correlated with feelings of depression, anxiety and generally lowered moods. Although initially believed to be a memetic consequence of the anomaly, testing has demonstrated this effect is non-anomalous.

Addendum: One of the most extensive documentations of SCP-4340 comes from Edward Cassin, an amateur ornithologist who lived alone in a remote forested area of Kauai from 1993 until his death in 1996. His body was discovered by Foundation operatives at the base of a tree few hundred metres away from his self-built cabin, having suffered severe blunt trauma from a large fall. However, the original cause of death was identified as starvation. A small net and an unused notepad were found in the tree above.

After hearing SCP-4340 a few months into his stay, Cassin spent much of his time trying to find a living Moho braccatus specimen. He kept a weekly journal within his cabin. The final entry reads as following:

The song doesn't stop. Each day I awake to hear the sickly sweet sounds pounding in my ears like a drum. With every passing tune I wish more and more to turn my head to the window and see something real. Something tangible. And yet, at the same time, I creep closer to the realisation that the moment I wish for will never come.

It is just a small green bird. How many small green birds are there around the world? There's probably several more we haven't discovered yet, more than enough to numerically compensate for the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō. But it can't be replaced. I don't know if I even have hope anymore. What am I seeking, if not something living?

I've come to realise something about people. One of our most naive aspects is that we view the Earth as something that is constantly changing.

Or rather, we view it as something that will be receptive to all the ways that we want to change it. But the reality of this planet is that sometimes, it simply doesn't want to change. We can do whatever we wish, but it wants to cling on to the way that it was before. The way that it knows.

But of course, the world can't stop us from stamping our changes on it. And there truly are so many human-shaped stamps around the world. Entire species and types of life - we've snapped our fingers and they've gone into the void - without them ever truly realising that its happening.

And what can the world do in response? Natural disasters haven't stopped us. Every time they happen, we build right back up on the ruins. Continue to make changes. Continue to stamp our stamps.

So if violence doesn't work, what can the world do? It can try and hang on to whatever has the ability to linger. Shallow imprints of things that the Earth isn't quite ready to let go of yet. The ghosts of our short-sightedness.

And these ghosts will sing. They don't know anything else other than to just sing as they would in any other time, not knowing why they will never receive a song in return. An unanswered call, that will last until the Earth is ready to snap its own fingers, and let them go too into the void.