An interesting writing by Rajiv Kalsi, Rahul Kaul and S Sathyakumar. It was published as part of the ongoing study of Pheasants and allies in India. In my opinion the most complete paper-based search review for the elusive Himalayan Quail. I asked for permission by mail to publish on PoB, but have yet to receive […]
This species is endemic to the tiny, fragmented forests of the Taita Hills, where it occurs in only four remnant patches, totalling less than 150 ha in area, on a single massif. It is also found in a larger patch of lesser disturbed forest on the adjacent massif of Mbololo. The Taita Hills are a […]
Bourns and Worcester in 1894 wrote the following account: We were so fortunate as to secure aseries of fourteen specimens of this rare horn-bill from Sulu and Tawi Tawi. The tail is pure white. All other parts black, the feathers of back and wings glossed with dark green. The bill in abult birds is coal […]
Comments on the Glaucous Macaw were first published by Sanchez Labrador (1767) who wrote that the Guaa’-obi lived along the banks of the Uruguay River, and to a lesser extent, in the forest near the Paraguay River. The species was first described by Vieillot in 1816, as Anodorhynchus glaucus, based on the observations of Azara […]
The great auk, now almost forgotten in the world by all except the ornithologists, is still remembered among the Penobscot as one of the legendary bird chiefs. While we may hesitate a moment in believing the strict identity of this now-extinct bird with the hero character in one of the creation tales, it nevertheless seems […]
Story After 35 years, a giant fossil penguin has finally been completely reconstructed, giving researchers new insights into prehistoric penguin diversity. The bones were collected in 1977 by Dr. Ewan Fordyce, a paleontologist from the University of Otago, New Zealand. In 2009 and 2011, Dr. Dan Ksepka, North Carolina State University research assistant professor of […]
The story Because it is so poorly known, the honeycreeper family, in particular its extinct members, arouses a certain amount of controversy. It is classified and reclassified over and over again, and drastic revisions of the family are made from time to time. Unfortunately, these revisions are, of necessity, made from specimen material rather than […]
The story The name of Baron Friedrich Heinrich von Kittlitz is associated with the stories of several extinct birds. During the late 1820’s he explored a number of Pacific islands during a round-the-world expedition on a Russian corvette called the Senjawin. In June 1829 Kittlitz landed on Peel Island (Chichi-jima), the largest island in the […]
The story The island of Rodrigues, far out in the Indian Ocean, is one of the Mascarene group and here a dodo-like species evolved from an ancestral pigeon stock. This species has become known as the Rodrigues Solitaire. The Huguenot refugee Francois Leguat, whose name occurs so regularly in the stories of extinct birds, took […]
The story During 1691 a small band of Huguenots, fleeing from religious persecution in France, ended up marooned for around two years on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues, far out in the Indian Ocean. Their leader was one Francois Leguat, and this gentleman made notes on the things he saw during his stay on the […]