Jamaican Petrel

Jamaica Petrel ( Pterodroma caribbaea )

The Jamaica Petrel ( Pterodroma caribbaea ) is a presumably extinct species of bird in the family of the petrels. Occasionally, he is regarded as a subspecies of the devil Petrel ( Pterodroma hasitata ). The few known museum specimens from the region of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica.

Features

The Jamaica Petrel reached a size of 40 centimeters. The wing length was 267-284 mm, the beak length from 29.1 to 32.6 mm, the run length from 34.0 to 36.6 mm and the tail length from 107.1 to 119.9 mm. The Jamaica Petrel looked very similar to the devil Petrel. The plumage was sooty-brown, more or less monochrome. The reins, the throat, and in some specimens of the lower abdomen were brighter than the devil 's Petrel. The rump and upper tail-coverts were white coffee brown. The beak, legs and feet were black. The eyes were dark.

Way of life

Little is known about his life. He was most likely nocturnal and brooded in colonies in the mountain forests of the Blue Mountains and John Crow Mountains to the east of Jamaica at altitudes up to 1600 m. The mating and breeding season was from October to December. Like most petrels probably put this species only one egg. The nest was located in cliff crevices or in burrows under trees.

Status

With its discovery in 1789, the Jamaica Petrel has been described as frequently. Even Philip Henry Gosse reported in 1847 about the existence of these petrels, but he was unable to provide a description of the nature. 1866 two specimens were collected, which served as the basis for the scientific description. The last documented evidence of the Jamaica Petrel was November-December 1879, when the English gardener William Nock was clear for the cultivation of China beef bushes forest areas in the Blue Mountains. 22 copies of the Jamaica Petrel were shot during this period, 8 of which are located in the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In a search expedition in 1891 the ornithologist William Earl Dodge Scott could no longer detectable copy, but multiple mongooses. At the same time Scott expressed the suspicion that the Jamaica Petrel could still occur in the John Crow Mountains. After further searches failed, he was Frederick DuCane Godman in his monograph " Monograph of the Petrels " ( 1907-10 ) called almost extinct. Carl Eduard Hellmayr and Henry Boardman Conover listed the species in 1948 in her work "Catalogue of birds of the Americas" to be extinct. 1965 reported the ornithologist William Bournevon rumors of petrels in the John Crow Mountains. This was followed by search expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s, and between 1996 and 2000, but all were unsuccessful. The main cause of the disappearance of the species overhunting apply (up to mid-19th century ) and the predation by rats, mongooses and pigs. BirdLife International classifies the Jamaica Petrel in the category of critically endangered ( possibly extinct ).

System

Even before the scientific first description in 1866, this bird was mentioned in 1789 by Patrick Browne in his work Natural History of Jamaica. For the locals, the species was known as " Blue Mountain Duck". 1936, the Jamaica Petrel was considered by Robert Cushman Murphy as a color morph of the devil Petrel. In 1991, the ornithologist Michael Imber put the conjecture suggests that the Jamaica Petrel ( Pterodroma feae ) closer to the Cape Verde Petrel was related and classified him as an independent art