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Réunion Night Heron
The Réunion night heron (''Nycticorax duboisi'') is an extinct species of heron formerly occurring on the Mascarene island of Réunion. It was for a long time only known from a single description, that of Dubois published in 1674. He stated: When subfossil bones were finally recovered in the late 20th century, they were initially described under a new name as the original description was believed to be invalid. However, only the genus initially assigned by Rothschild was incorrect. The Réunion night heron was the largest ''Nycticorax'' of the Mascarene Islands and larger even than the nankeen night heron. Unlike its relatives from Mauritius and Rodrigues, it was not adapted to a terrestrial lifestyle; its wings were strong and its legs not adapted to chasing prey on foot. Dubois mentions that the birds lived on fish. Extinction Of all the reports mentioning herons on Réunion, only the one of Dubois can be assigned to this species. Significantly, Jean Feuilley Jean Feuil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937) was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was presented with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Rothschild was the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926. Early life Walter Rothschild was born in London as the eldest son and heir of Emma Louise von Rothschild and Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, an immensely wealthy financier of the international Rothschild financial dynasty and the first Jewish peer in England. The eldest of three children, Walter was deemed to have delicate health and was educated at home. As a young man, he travelled in Europe, attending the University of Bonn for a year before entering Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1889, leaving Cambridge after two years, he was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird Extinctions Since 1500
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. Bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extinct Birds Of Indian Ocean Islands
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, mam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat Destruction
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby reducing biodiversity and species abundance. Habitat destruction is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. Fragmentation and loss of habitat have become one of the most important topics of research in ecology as they are major threats to the survival of endangered species. Activities such as harvesting natural resources, industrial production and urbanization are human contributions to habitat destruction. Pressure from agriculture is the principal human cause. Some others include mining, logging, trawling, and urban sprawl. Habitat destruction is currently considered the primary cause of species extinction worldwide. Environmental factors can contribute to habitat destruction more indirectly. Geological processes, climate change, introdu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Striated Heron
The striated heron (''Butorides striata'') also known as mangrove heron, little green heron or green-backed heron, is a small heron, about 44 cm tall. Striated herons are mostly sedentary and noted for some interesting behavioral traits. Their breeding habitat is small wetlands in the Old World tropics from west Africa to Japan and Australia, and in South America and the Caribbean. Vagrants have been recorded on Oceanic islands, such as Chuuk and Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marianas and Palau; the bird recorded on Yap on February 25, 1991, was from a continental Asian rather than from a Melanesian population, while the origin of the bird seen on Palau on May 3, 2005 was not clear. This bird was long considered to be conspecific with the closely related North American species, the green heron, which is now usually separated as ''B. virescens'', as well as the lava heron of the Galápagos Islands (now ''B. sundevalli'', but often included in ''B. striata'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Feuilley
Jean Feuilley was a pilot engineer and cartographer who was sent to Réunion by the French East India Company to investigate the possibility of agricultural and marine exploitation. He arrived in the island in 1704 and the following year returned to France. His "Mission à l’île Bourbon du sieur Feuilley en 1704" (published 1705) contains among other things descriptions of now-extinct bird species, like the Réunion kestrel and the Réunion ibis The Réunion ibis or Réunion sacred ibis (''Threskiornis solitarius'') is an extinct species of ibis that was endemic to the volcanic island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The first subfossil remains were found in 1974, and the ibis was firs .... References French cartographers French East India Company French engineers French male writers {{France-engineer-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodrigues Night Heron
The Rodrigues night heron (''Nycticorax megacephalus'') is an extinct species of heron formerly occurring on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues (island), Rodrigues. Taxonomy It is known from subfossil bones and the 1708 description of François Leguat, Leguat as well as the 1726 report of Julien Tafforet. Description The skull of the Rodrigues night heron was 154 long,the upper mandible was 94 mm and the lower was 147. Behaviour and ecology Little is known about the behaviour of the Rodrigues night heron apart from the two contemporary descriptions. Leguat's 1708 description, wherein he stated the bird fed on endemic ''Phelsuma'' geckos (likely the Rodrigues day gecko), reads as follows: Milne-Edwards suggested in 1874 that the Rodrigues night heron had reduced power of flight, an opinion which Günther and Newton corroborated in 1879 by measuring the known wing-bones and founding all of them except the scapula to have been reduced in size and strength, while retaining the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mauritius Night Heron
The Mauritius night heron (''Nycticorax mauritianus'') is an extinct night heron species from Mauritius. It is only known by seven subfossil bone remains consisted of cranium, pelvis, coracoid, ulna, radius, and tarsometatarsus found in Mare aux Songes. Only the coracoid and the tarsometatarsus are left today. It was scientifically described in 1893 by Edward Newton and Hans Gadow from the Cambridge University. Newton and Gadow measured the tarsometatarsus with 81 to 87 mm.Greenway, James C. (1967): Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World It became presumedly extinct in the late 17th century and was probably first mentioned by François Leguat François Leguat (1637/1639 – September 1735) was a French explorer and naturalist. He was one of a small group of male French Protestant refugees who in 1691 settled on the then uninhabited island of Rodrigues in the western Indian Ocean. T ... in 1693 who described them as a "great flight of bitterns". References Ext ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mascarene Islands
The Mascarene Islands (, ) or Mascarenes or Mascarenhas Archipelago is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar consisting of the islands belonging to the Republic of Mauritius as well as the French department of Réunion. Their name derives from the Portuguese navigator Pedro Mascarenhas, who first visited them in April 1512. The islands share a common geologic origin in the volcanism of the Réunion hotspot beneath the Mascarene Plateau and form a distinct ecoregion with a unique flora and fauna. Geography The archipelago comprises three large islands, Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues, plus a number of volcanic remnants in the tropics of the southwestern Indian Ocean, generally between 700 and 1500 kilometres east of Madagascar. The terrain includes a variety of reefs, atolls, and small islands. They present various topographical and edaphic regions. On the largest islands these gave rise to unusual biodiversity. The climate is oceanic and tropical. Mau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masauji Hachisuka
, 18th Marquess Hachisuka, was a Japanese ornithologist and aviculturist.Delacour, J. (1953) The Dodo and Kindred Birds by Masauji Hachisuka (Review). The Condor 55 (4): 223.Peterson, A. P. (2013Author Index: Hachisuka, Masauji (Masa Uji), marquis Zoonomen Nomenclatural data. Retrieved 03 February 2017. Biography He was the great grandson of the 11th shōgun Tokugawa Ienari and also nephew of the last shōgun Prince Tokugawa,Perez, C. (2015A Short History of Philippine Bird Books – Part 6 American Period Wild Bird Club of the Philippines. Retrieved 03 February 2017. Hachisuka was born in Tokyo in 1903. He moved to England at the age of nineteen to complete his education and studied zoology for five years at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where his interest in birds grew considerably, much at the encouragement of Dr. Guillemard and A. H. Evans, culminating in his inclusion at the British Ornithologists' Union.N. B. K. (1954) Obituary: The Marquess Hachisuka. Ibis 96 (1): 150. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nycticorax
''Nycticorax'' is a genus of night herons. The name ''Nycticorax'' means "night raven" and derives from the Ancient Greek νύκτος, ''nuktos'' "night" and κοραξ, ''korax'', "raven". It refers to the largely nocturnal feeding habits of this group of birds, and the croaking crow-like call of the best known species, the black-crowned night heron. These are medium-sized herons which often are migratory in the colder parts of their ranges. Adults are short-necked, relatively short-legged and stout herons; the two extant species both have a black crown and a whitish belly, while the wings, chest, neck and auriculars are grey or rufous depending on the species. Young birds are brown, flecked with white and grey, and are quite similar to each other in the extant species. At least some of the extinct Mascarenes taxa appear to have retained this juvenile plumage in adult birds. Night herons nest in colonies on platforms of sticks in a group of trees, or on the ground in pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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