Chatham Bell Honeyeater
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Chatham bell honeyeater ( Anthornis melanocephala ) |
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| Anthornis melanocephala | ||||||||||||
| GR Gray , 1843 |
The Chatham bell honey eater ( Anthornis melanocephala ) is an extinct species of bird in the honey eater family . At times it was considered a subspecies of the Maori bell honey eater ( Anthornis melanura ). The species was endemic to the Chatham Islands .
features
The Chatham bell honeyeater reached a size of 25 centimeters. The wing length was 110 mm, the tail length 110 mm, the beak length 17 mm and the barrel length 38 mm. It was larger than the Maori bell honey eater and its head was darker. The plumage of the male was predominantly olive green on the upper side. The belly and the flanks were lighter. The forehead and parting were steel blue. On the sides of the head and the throat the color turned into a purple blue. The wing and tail feathers were black-brown with olive-green edges. The iris was yellow. The beak was black, the legs were brown. The female was smaller and showed darker head, rump and underside coloration than the male. The singing was richer and fuller than that of the Maori bell honey eater.
Occurrence and habitat
The Chatham bell-honeyeater inhabited the forests of the three islands belonging to the Chatham Islands, Chatham Island, Mangere Island and Little Mangere Island.
Way of life
There is no detailed information about his way of life. Comparisons with the Maori bell honey eater suggest, however, that the diet consisted of blossom honey, berries and insects.
die out
New Zealand paleontologist and bird collector Williams Hawkins wrote in 1896: “This bird is almost extinct. I have no trouble selling a hide for £ 1 apiece, so I was busy looking for the birds. But it has become very difficult to catch any of them. ”The last specimens were observed on Little Mangere Island in 1906 . After unconfirmed sightings became known in the 1950s, the New Zealand ornithologist Logan Bell visited the Chatham Islands in 1961, where he could no longer find any specimens. The exact causes for the extinction of the Chatham bell honey eater are unknown, according to the IUCN a combination of habitat destruction, predation by introduced domestic cats and rats and excessive exploitation for museum collections was probably decisive. Museum copies are kept in Bremen , Berlin and Frankfurt am Main .
swell
Individual evidence
- ^ Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Royal Society of New Zealand. 1896.
literature
- David Day: The Doomsday Book of Animals. Ebury Press, London 1981. ISBN 0-670-27987-0
- James Cowan Greenway : Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World. Dover Publications Inc. New York 1967. ISBN 0-486-21869-4
- Dieter Luther: The extinct birds of the world. Westarp Sciences, 1986. ISBN 3-89432-213-6
Web links
- Anthornis melanocephala in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2010. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2008. Accessed on January 1, 2011th
