Extinct Birds Part 43

_Pezophaps minor_ Strickland, Contr. to Orn. 1852, p. 19 (?).

This bird was first made known by Leguat in 1708, but some confusion seems to have arisen, owing to his applying the same name to them as the Sieur D.B. (Dubois) gave to the Bourbon Dodo in 1674. This is the original description:--

"The feathers of the males are of a brown-grey colour, the feet and beak are like a turkey's, but a little more crooked. They have scarce any tail, but their hind part covered with feathers is roundish, like the crupper of a hare. They are taller than turkeys. Their neck is straight, and a little longer in proportion than a turkey's when it lifts up his head. Its eye is black and lively, and its head without comb on cop. They never fly, their wings are too little to support the weight of their bodies; they serve only to beat themselves and flutter when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or thirty times together on the same side during the s.p.a.ce of 4 or 5 minutes. The motions of their wings make then a noise very like that of a rattle, and one may hear it two hundred paces off. The bone of their {178} wings grows greater towards the extremity, and forms a little round ma.s.s under the feathers as big as a musket ball. That and its beak are the chief defences of this bird. 'Tis very hard to catch in the woods, but easy in open places, because we run faster than they, and sometimes we approach them without much trouble. From March to September they are very fat, and taste admirably well, especially while they are young, some of the males weigh 45 pounds. The females are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown. I call them fair, because they are the colour of fair hair; they have a sort of peak like a widow's, upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which is of a dun colour. No one feather is straggling from the other all over their bodies, they being very careful to adjust themselves, and make them all even with their beaks. The feathers on their thighs are round like sh.e.l.ls at the end, and being there very thick, have an agreeable effect. They have two risings on their craws, and the feathers are whiter there than the rest, which livelily represents the fine neck of a beautiful woman. They walk with so much stateliness and good grace that one cannot help admiring them and loving them, by which means their fine mien often saves their lives."

The unfortunate Solitaires, owing to the depredations by the pigs and monkeys introduced by the settlers, and the unceasing slaughter by the latter, became extinct between the years 1760 and 1780.

Of their habits we only have the accounts of Leguat:--

"Though these birds will sometimes very familiarly come up near enough to one, when we do not run after them, yet they will never grow tame, as soon as they are caught they shed tears, without crying, and refuse all manner of sustenance till they die.

When these birds build their nests, they choose a clean place, gather together some palm leaves for that purpose, and heap them up a foot and a half high from the ground, on which they sit. They never lay but one egg, which is much bigger than that of a goose. The male and female both cover it in their turns, and the young is not hatched till at 7 weeks end. All the while they are sitting upon it, or are bringing up their young one, which is not able to provide for itself in several months, they will not suffer any other bird of their species to come within two hundred yards round of the place. But what is very singular is, the males will never drive away the females, only when they perceive one they make a noise with their wings to call their own female--she drives away the unwelcome stranger, not leaving it till it was without her bounds. The female does the same as to males, which she leaves to the male who drives them away. We have observed this several times, and I {179} affirm it to be true. The combats between them on this occasion last sometimes pretty long, because the stranger only turns about, and does not fly directly from the nest.

However, the others do not forsake it till they have quite driven it out of their limits. After these birds have raised their young one, and left it to itself, they are always together, which the other birds are not, and though they happen to mingle with other birds of the same species, these two companions never disunite.

We have often remarked, that some days after the young one leaves the nest, a company of 30 or 40 bring another young one to it, and the new fledged bird, joining the band with its father and mother, they march to some bye place. We frequently followed them, and found that afterwards the old ones went each their way alone, or in couples, and left the two young ones together, which we called a marriage."

Leguat's, d'Heguerty's, and the Abbe Pingre's descriptions were all we had of this great ground pigeon down to 1866, except a few bones. When Mr.

Strickland proved its distinctness from the Dodo of Mauritius in 1844, and up to 1852, these bones numbered 18. In 1864 Mr. E. Newton and Captain Barclay got 3 more bones, in 1865 Mr. Jenner, the resident magistrate, collected 8 bones, and in 1866 nearly 2,000 bones were collected, but during the Transit of Venus expedition in 1874, a thorough search was made, and a number of complete skeletons was collected.

Habitat: Island of Rodriguez.

Represented in Museums by a number of complete skeletons and a large number of bones.

Explanation of Plates.

_Plate 23._

Coloured drawing made from Leguat's description and figure.

_Plate 25 (a)._

_Fig. 1._ Outline of figure in Leguat's Voyage, 1708.

_Fig. 2._ Outline of Schlegel's reconstructed figure of the Solitaire, 1854.

_Fig. 3._ Outline of Solitaire in Frontispiece to Leguat's Voyage, 1708.

{181}

TYMPANUCHUS CUPIDO (L.)

HEATH HEN.

_Tetrao cupido_ Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. Ed. X, p. 160 (1758--ex Catesby, Carolina II, App. p. 1, pl. 1, 1743. "Habitat in Virginia"); Vieillot, Gal. Ois. II, p. 55, p. 219 (1825).

_Pinnated Grouse_ Latham, Gen. Syn. II, 2, p. 740 (1783).

_Bonasa cupido_ Stephens, in Shaw's Gen. Zool. XI, p. 299 (1819--New Jersey and Long Island).

_Cupidonia cupido_ Baird, B. N. Am. p. 628 (1860--partim); Maynard, B.

E. Ma.s.sach. p. 138 (1870--Martha's Vineyard and Naushon Island); Brewster, Auk 1885, p. 82 (Ma.s.sachusetts).

_Cupidonia cupido var. cupido_ Baird, Brewer & Ridgway, N. Amer. B.

III, p. 440 (1874).

_Cupidonia cupido brewsteri_ Coues, Key N.A.B., App. p. 884 (1887).

_Tympanuchus cupido_ Ridgway, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. VIII, p. 355 (1885); Bendire, Life-Hist. N. Amer. B. I, p. 93 (1892); Grant, Cat. B. Brit.

B. XXII, p. 77; Check-List N. Amer. B. Ed. II, p. 115, No. 306 (1895); Hartlaub, Abh. Naturw. Ver. Bremen XIV, 1 (second ed. of separate copy, p. 15) (1896).

Linnaeus' brief diagnosis is: "Tetrao pedibus hirsutis alis succenturiatis cervicalibus." After the habitat he adds: "Color Tetricis feminae; vertex subcristatus; a tergo colli duae parvae alae: singulae pennis quinque."

This diagnosis is taken from Catesby, who gives a fairly good description and a recognizable coloured plate. He specially mentions that the neck-tufts are composed of five feathers, and in his figure they are shown to be much pointed. Catesby expressly states that he does not know exactly from which part of America his specimen came--yet Linnaeus says "Habitat in Virginia."

Formerly the Heath Hen inhabited New England and part of the Middle States (Southern Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, Nantucket, Eastern Pennsylvania), but in 1887 Ridgway stated already that it was then apparently extinct, except on Martha's Vineyard. About that time it was still common on that island, inhabiting the woods and chiefly haunting oak scrub and feeding on acorns. They were then "strictly protected by law,"

but this protection seems not to have been effectual, as from 1893 to 1897 a number were killed, skinned, and sold to various museums. This was, perhaps, fortunate rather than unfortunate, because Mr. Hoyle (the man who collected them) told us that in 1894 a fire destroyed many of them, and in the fall of 1897 they were practically gone. But almost worse than this, perhaps, two pairs of "Prairie Chicken" (_Tympanuchus america.n.u.s_) were liberated and broods of young (of the latter apparently) were seen, so that it {182} is to be feared that birds shot now on Martha's Vineyards Island may have blood of _T. america.n.u.s_ in them, the two forms being closely related, somewhat difficult to distinguish, and evidently sub-species of each other. Nevertheless, a bird taken in 1901 was p.r.o.nounced to be typical _cupido_ by Mr. Brewster.

From these facts it is pretty clear that the Heath Hen is among the birds the fate of which is sealed, and which, if not already exterminated or mixed with foreign blood, will soon have disappeared. The footnote in the Proceedings of the IV. International Ornithological Congress, p. 203, is herewith corrected.

{183}

COTURNIX NOVAEZELANDIAE QUOY & GAIM.

(PLATE 28, FIG. 2.)

_Coturnix Novae-Zelandiae_ Quoy and Gaimard, Voy. Astrolabe, Zool. I.

p. 242, pl. 24, fig. 1 (1830--"Il habit la baie Chouraki (riviere Tamise de Cook), a la Nouvelle-Zelande"); Gould, Syn. B. Austr., text and pl. fig 2 (1837-38); Buller, B. New Zealand, p. 161, pl. (1873); Hist. B. New Zealand, 2nd ed. I, p. 225, pl. XXIII (1888); Grant, Cat.

B. Brit. Mus. XXII p. 245 (1893).

This Quail, though a typical _Coturnix_, is easily distinguished from all other species. The male has the upper-side almost black, each feather bordered and indistinctly barred with rufous-brown, and with a wide, creamy white shaft-line. The throat and sides of the head are rufous-cinnamon, the feathers of the chest and breast at their basal half buff with a broken black cross-bar, the distal half black, with two pale buff spots near the tip, or with a continuous white border.

This sole representative of the "gamebirds" in New Zealand was in former days very numerous in both islands, but especially so in the South Island, wherever there was open gra.s.s-land, but is now evidently extinct. Its disappearance is apparently not due to excessive shooting, but rather to the introduction of rats, cats, and dogs, and last, but not least, to bush-fires and to the regular burning of the sheep-runs, according to Sir Walter Buller. No doubt the establishment itself of extensive sheep-farms in the once, more or less, uninhabited gra.s.s-land was ominous for the future of the Quail.

It is not quite clear when the Quail disappeared. The last on the North Island was shot by Captain Mair at Whangarei in 1860. Specimens were recorded in 1867 and 1869, but were apparently not procured. In Haast's "Journal of Exploration in the Nelson Province" it is said to be still very abundant in 1861 on the gra.s.sy plains of the interior.

Sir Walter Buller mentions two specimens said to be from an island in Blue Skin Bay, shot in "1867 or 1868." In his Second Edition of the Birds of New Zealand he informs us that it was found occasionally in the South Island down to 1875, but in the "Supplement" he speaks of a specimen said to have been shot in 1871, but adds, "There is no absolute evidence of it," and "if true, this individual bird must have been about the last of its race."

Therefore, evidently the note about 1875 was erroneous. {184}

The statement of Mr. Cheeseman, that he took eggs on Three Kings Islands is erroneous. The eggs belonged to a _Synoecus_, and the egg given to Sir Walter Buller is now in my collection.

I have, however, also two eggs of _Coturnix novaezealandiae_, brought home by Dr. H. O. Forbes. They have a brownish-white sh.e.l.l, covered and washed all over with deep brown patches and lighter brown underlying markings.

They show distinctly the character of Quails' eggs, but, besides being much larger, are easily distinguished from eggs of _Coturnix coturnix_. They measure 34.3 by 25 and 34.5 by 21.3 mm.