Moorea Warbler

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Moorea Warbler
Drawing by William Ellis

Drawing by William Ellis

Systematics
Order : Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
Superfamily : Sylvioidea
Family : Reed warbler (Acrocephalidae)
Genre : Reed warbler ( Acrocephalus )
Type : Moorea Warbler
Scientific name
Acrocephalus longirostris
( Gmelin , 1789)

The Moorea warbler ( Acrocephalus longirostris ) is a presumably extinct species of bird from the genus of the warbler . It was endemic to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia .

Systematics

The Moorea reed warbler was described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789 as Turdus longirostris . The first description is based on specimens of Moorea, which the naturalist John Latham had discovered in the collections of Sir Ashton Lever ("Museum Leverianum") and Sir Joseph Banks . In the following years the Moorea reed warbler was classified as a subspecies of the long-billed reed warbler ( Acrocephalus caffer ). After phylogenetic studies, the taxon is considered to be an independent species in a study published in the Journal Ibis in 2008 .

description

The Moorea reed warbler reached a length of 19 centimeters. The top of the head, buttocks, back, shoulder feathers and tail-coverts were dark olive. The rump was straw yellow. The feathers had yellowish edges. The tail feathers were clove brown. The hand swing feathers had narrow yellowish edges on the outer flags and whitish tips. The innermost hand-wings and the arm-wings had broader cream-white tips. The elytra were clove-brown with broad barium-yellow margins. The bow of the wing was barium yellow. The central control feathers were clove brown with creamy white tips. The lower eyelids, a narrow stripe above the eyes, the reins, the cheeks and the entire underside were barium yellow. The tail covers were mouse gray. The iris was olive brown. The upper jaw was horn-colored, the lower jaw was flesh-colored. Legs and feet were blue-gray.

Habitat and way of life

Little is known about the way of life of the Moorea warbler. Like its relative - the long-billed reed warbler of Tahiti - it fed on insects, lizards and small invertebrates. Its habitat were river forests, hillside forests, bamboo thickets and secondary forests.

status

In 1921, only three specimens were collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. Two pairs were observed between 1971 and 1973. The last confirmed sighting was in July 1981. A search for the species between 1986 and 1987 was unsuccessful. The main reasons for its disappearance were probably the degradation of the bamboo groves and the competition with the Shepherd Maina .

There are two drawings by William Ellis and John Webber (1751–1793), which were created between 1776 and 1780 during Cook's third voyage to the South Seas . The natural scientist Leopold von Fichtel (1770–1810) acquired several copies for the Hof-Naturalien-Cabinet in Vienna. Two of them, Latham's type specimen and a female, were not preserved.

literature

  • Gregory Matthews, Robert Cushman Murphy: Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. 1928 ( online , PDF file; 1.78 MB)
  • Alice Cibois , Jean-Claude Thibault, Eric Pasquet: Systematics of the extinct reed warblers Acrocephalus of the Society Islands of eastern Polynesia. In: Ibis. 150, 2008, pp. 365-376.
  • J. Del Hoyo, A. Elliot, David A. Christie (Eds.): Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 11: Old World Flycatchers to Old World Warblers. Lynx Edicions 2006, ISBN 849655306X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alice Cibois, Jean-Claude Thibault, Eric Pasquet: Systematics of the extinct reed warblers Acrocephalus of the Society Islands of eastern Polynesia. In: Ibis. 150, 2008, pp. 365-376
  2. ^ Gregory Matthews, Robert Cushman Murphy: Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. 1928

Web links