Kosrae singing star
| Kosrae singing star | ||||||||||||
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Kosrae Singstar ( Aplonis corvina ) |
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| Aplonis corvina | ||||||||||||
| ( Kittlitz , 1833) |
The Kosrae singing star ( Aplonis corvina ), also known as the raven star , is an extinct songbird from the starling family . It was endemic to the mountain forests on the Caroline island of Kosrae in the southwestern Pacific .
description
It reached a length between 20 and 25.4 centimeters. It was crow-like, generally glossy black, and had a long curved bill and tail.
die out
The Kosrae Singstar is only known from five specimens that were shot between December 1827 and January 1828. There are three bellows in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg and two more in the Naturalis Museum in Leiden . As early as 1880, an expedition led by Otto Finsch could no longer prove any more copies. Another search by the Whitney Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History in 1931 finally revealed that this species was extinct. His disappearance is presumably due to the pursuit of rats (apparently like the Hopfstar he had lost the instinct to flee ), which escaped from Finnish whaling ships anchored off Kosrae and spread across the island.
literature
- Greenway, James (1967): Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World. Dover Publications Inc. New York, ISBN 0-486-21869-4
- Errol Fuller (2000): Extinct Birds. ISBN 0-8160-1833-2
- Flannery, Tim & Schouten, Peter (2001): A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York. ISBN 0-87113-797-6 .
- David Day (1981): The Doomsday Book of Animals. Ebury Press, London, ISBN 0-670-27987-0
Web links
- BirdLife factsheet - Aplonis corvina
- Naturalis Museum, Leiden - Kosrae Starling
- Aplonis corvina inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Endangered Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved December 9, 2013.