An interesting writing by Rajiv Kalsi, Rahul Kaul and S Sathyakumar. It was published as part of the ongoing study of Pheasants and allies in India. In my opinion the most complete paper-based search review for the elusive Himalayan Quail. I asked for permission by mail to publish on PoB, but have yet to receive […]
This species is endemic to the tiny, fragmented forests of the Taita Hills, where it occurs in only four remnant patches, totalling less than 150 ha in area, on a single massif. It is also found in a larger patch of lesser disturbed forest on the adjacent massif of Mbololo. The Taita Hills are a […]
Bourns and Worcester in 1894 wrote the following account: We were so fortunate as to secure aseries of fourteen specimens of this rare horn-bill from Sulu and Tawi Tawi. The tail is pure white. All other parts black, the feathers of back and wings glossed with dark green. The bill in abult birds is coal […]
Comments on the Glaucous Macaw were first published by Sanchez Labrador (1767) who wrote that the Guaa’-obi lived along the banks of the Uruguay River, and to a lesser extent, in the forest near the Paraguay River. The species was first described by Vieillot in 1816, as Anodorhynchus glaucus, based on the observations of Azara […]
The great auk, now almost forgotten in the world by all except the ornithologists, is still remembered among the Penobscot as one of the legendary bird chiefs. While we may hesitate a moment in believing the strict identity of this now-extinct bird with the hero character in one of the creation tales, it nevertheless seems […]
Story After 35 years, a giant fossil penguin has finally been completely reconstructed, giving researchers new insights into prehistoric penguin diversity. The bones were collected in 1977 by Dr. Ewan Fordyce, a paleontologist from the University of Otago, New Zealand. In 2009 and 2011, Dr. Dan Ksepka, North Carolina State University research assistant professor of […]
The story The Huguenot refugee Francois Leguat discovered a relative of the Mauritian Red Rail during his two-year sojourn on the island of Rodrigues: Our Wood-hens are fat all the year round and of a most delicate taste. Their colour is always of a bright grey, and there is very little difference in the plumage […]
The story A bird very closely related to the Hawaii Mamo once lived on the island of Molokai. Here it was discovered by R. C. L. Perkins at an altitude of 1525 metres during June 1893. What is known of the species comes largely from Perkins’s account. Individuals were only ever seen low down in […]
The story Laysan is a tiny coral island around 1280 km to the north-east of Hawaii, and one of its few inhabitants was a small species of rail. Because it is so remote, the island was infrequently visited but, nevertheless, there are several good accounts of the bird in life. These consistently tell of how […]
The story One member of this order, the Spectacled Cormorant, can confidently be listed as extinct, but there is one other rather mysterious form that may be. This is a bird known as Kenyon’s Shag (Phalacrocorax kenyoni). It is identified from just three specimens from Amchitka Island, in the Aleutian Archipelago of the north Pacific, […]