Norfolk Starling
Encyclopedia
The Norfolk Starling was a small bird in the starling
Starling
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The name "Sturnidae" comes from the Latin word for starling, sturnus. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, are called mynas, and many African species are known as glossy starlings because of their iridescent...

 family. It is the extinct
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 nominate subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 of the Tasman Starling
Tasman Starling
The Tasman Starling was described in 1836 by John Gould as a species which occurred on both Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island...

, the only other subspecies being the Lord Howe Starling
Lord Howe Starling
The Lord Howe Starling was a small bird in the starling family. It is an extinct subspecies of the Tasman Starling , the only other subspecies being the Norfolk Starling which is also extinct...

 (Aplonis fusca hulliana).

Distribution

The Norfolk Starling was confined to Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance...

, an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n territory in the Tasman Sea
Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea is the large body of water between Australia and New Zealand, approximately across. It extends 2,800 km from north to south. It is a south-western segment of the South Pacific Ocean. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, the first recorded European...

 between Australia and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

.

Description

The Norfolk Starling was 20 cm long. The wing length was 9.8 cm to 10.3 cm, the length of the tail was 6.3 to 6.8 cm, the length of the culmen 1.3 cm and tarsus was 2.5 cm. It was generally greyish brown. The males were glossy metallic green from head to the throat. The back, the rump, the uppertail coverts, the wing coverts, and underparts were grey, but undertail coverts were whitish. The bill was black and the eyes orange red. The females were coloured similar but the greenish gloss were slightly duller and a grey throat contrasted with pale brownish flanks. The under breast was washed ochraceous. The abdomen and the undertail coverts were yellowish white.

Extinction

The reasons for its extinction are unclear. Competition from introduced European starlings, song thrushs and common blackbirds, overhunting and habitat loss through agricultural clearing might have played an important role. Reports in older literature that it became extinct by rats as its relative from Lord Howe Island are not correct because rats became first a pest on Norfolk Island by 1940. It became extinct in 1923.

External links

  • BirdLife Species Factsheet
  • 3D view of specimens RMNH 110.032, RMNH 110.033 and RMNH 110.035 at Naturalis
    Naturalis
    Naturalis is the national natural history museum of the Netherlands, based in Leiden. It originated from the merger of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie and the Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie in 1984. In 1986 it was decided that the museum had to become a public museum and a new...

    , Leiden (requires QuickTime
    QuickTime
    QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...

    browser plugin).
  • Norfolk Island Starling. Aplonis fusca. by Paul Martinson. Artwork produced for the book Extinct Birds of New Zealand, by Alan Tennyson, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2006
  • Birdtheme.org Illustration on a stamp
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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