Banggai crow
| Banggai crow | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Corvus unicolor | ||||||||||||
| ( Rothschild & Hartert , 1900) |
The Banggai crow ( Corvus unicolor ) is a critically endangered species of crow that is endemic to the Banggai Archipelago . For a long time it was only known from two museum specimens and was thought to be extinct before it was rediscovered in 2007.
features
The Banggai crow reaches a size of 39 centimeters. Their entire plumage is shiny, deep blue-black. The coloring is more intense on the forehead and duller on the underside. The nasal feathers are poorly developed and only cover the nostrils. The base of the beak ridge is bare. The iris is dark and the almost square tail is short. The two type specimens have the following dimensions: wing length: 205 and 208 mm, beak ridge length: 45 and 43 mm and tail length: 104 and 109 mm.
Occurrence and habitat
The Banggai crow occurs in mountain forests on the island of Peleng at altitudes above 500 m.
Way of life
Research into the Banggai crow's way of life has been in progress since 2007 and has not yet been published.
Systematics and status
In 1900 Walter Rothschild and Ernst Hartert described two commercially acquired crow's hides from an unnamed island in the Banggai archipelago. These two specimens first came to the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring and are now kept in the American Museum of Natural History . Observations of a species of crow in the Banggai Islands in November 1981 may apply to this species, but research in 1991 and 1996 did not produce conclusive results. With the exception of the specimens discovered on Peleng in late November 1991, crows that were observed in six locations on the Banggai Islands were similar in size to the Sunda crow ( Corvus enca ), which was also listed for the Banggai Islands . In the following years, the Banggai crow was thought to be probably extinct, until a large-scale expedition was carried out on Peleng in 2007 and 2008, which was partly financed by the Zoological Society for Species and Population Protection (ZGAP). The Indonesian ornithologist and conservationist Mochamad Indrawan managed to photograph and catch two specimens. The bellows were sent to the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense in Bogor on Java and the rediscovery was announced in May 2008 in the communications of the ZGAP. In 2009, Pamela C. Rasmussen , ornithologist at Michigan State University , compared the two old museum specimens from New York with the new ones from Peleng. It not only provided evidence that the Banggai crow is a separate species and not, as previously assumed, a subspecies of the Sunda crow, but also proved through a DNA analysis that the crows discovered on Peleng were actually the Banggai crow believed to be extinct. Mochamad Indrawan estimates the population at 500 individuals who are threatened by hunting and habitat loss.
literature
- Steve Madge & Hilary Burn : Crows and jays: a guide to the crows, jays and magpies of the world. A&C Black, London 1994, ISBN 0-7136-3999-7 .
- Charles Vaurie : Remarks on some Corvidae of Indo-Malaya and the Australian region . American Museum Novitates number 1915 (1958): S 1-13 PDF full text
- Steve Madge & John Marzluff : Family Corvidae (Crows and Allies) In: Del Hoyo et al. (2009) Handbook of the Birds of World Volume 14 ISBN 978-84-96553-50-7
- Derek Goodwin : Crows of the World . Cornell University Press 1976. ISBN 978-0-8014-1057-4
Web links
- BirdLife Species factsheet
- Status and biology of the Banggai crow (Corvus unicolor)
- Photo of a museum specimen
- Rare Crow, Thought Extinct, Is Rediscovered
- Corvus unicolor inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 15, 2013.