Bonin red-backed heron
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Bonin red-backed heron ( Nycticorax caledonicus crassirostris ) |
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| Nycticorax caledonicus crassirostris | ||||||||||||
| Vigors , 1839 |
The Bonin red-backed heron ( Nycticorax caledonicus crassirostris ), also known as the bonin heron , is an extinct subspecies of the red-backed heron ( Nycticorax caledonicus ). It occurred on the Bonin Islands . Nicholas Aylward Vigors described this bird in 1839 after reports from Heinrich von Kittlitz and Captain Frederick William Beechey , who stopped off the Bonin Islands in 1828 with the HMS Blossom .
features
The Bonin red-backed heron reached a size of 61 centimeters. The black skull was characterized by two long, white decorative feathers that reached down to the back. The back was cinnamon brown, the underside was white. Feet and legs were orange. The beak was black. It differed from the red-backed heron by its thicker and straighter beak.
Occurrence and habitat
The distribution of the Bonin red-backed heron was limited to the islands of Chichi-jima and Nakōdo-jima in the Ogasawara archipelago. Its habitat were beaches and marshes, where it built its nests in low trees.
food
Its diet consisted of fish, insects, and probably small turtles.
die out
The main reasons for its extinction were most likely pursuit by rats, dogs and feral cats, as well as overhunting because of the ornamental feathers that were often used by the milliners in Imperial Japan. The last copy was collected on Nakōdo-jima in 1889. Six museum specimens are known, one each in London and Bremen and four in Saint Petersburg .
literature
- James C. Greenway (1967): Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World . Dover Publications Inc., New York, ISBN 0-486-21869-4
- David Day: The Doomsday Book of Animals. Ebury Press, London 1981, ISBN 0670279870
- Dieter Luther: The extinct birds of the world. Westarp Sciences, 1995, ISBN 3-89432-213-6