Lord-Howe-Gerygone
Lord Howe Gerygone ( below) on a branch
The Lord Howe Gerygone ( Gerygone insularis ), also known as Lord Howe gray bush Pfeifer, is an extinct species of bird in the family of the South Seas warblers ( Acanthizidae ). She was endemic to the Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea and was at times as a subspecies of Maorigerygone ( Gerygone igata ).
Features
The Lord Howe Gerygone reached a size of 12 centimeters. The skull was uniformly brown. The ear-coverts were light gray. A small eyebrow line extended above the reins. To the pink iris was a light gray eye-ring. Chin and throat were also light gray with a faint trace of yellow. The neck and the top were brown. On the rump coloration turned into a yellowish brown. The throat was light gray and white with a yellowish tint. The abdomen was strong straw. The tail was olive-brown at the base and went to the tail end into a black. The four outer tail feather pairs showed white spots near the tail tips. The under tail was white. The beak was gray - black. The legs and feet were blue - gray.
Way of life
Over the life of the Lord Howe Gerygone almost nothing is known. From the islanders it was as "rain bird" ( Rain Bird ) because she was particularly active after rains.
Extinction
With their discovery, Lord Howe Gerygone was described as quite often. During a plague of rats, which spread from 1918 on Lord Howe Island, the stocks have been decimated so drastically that this species was detected in 1928 for the last time. Searching in 1936, the Lord Howe Gerygone could not be rediscovered.
System
The taxonomists Richard Schodde and Ian J. Mason classified the Lord Howe Gerygone 1999 as a subspecies of Maorigerygone, but after the ornithologist Julian Ralph Ford 1986 explaining that the Lord Howe Gerygone closer to the fantail - Gerygone ( Gerygone flavolateralis ) and the Mangrove Gerygone ( Gerygone levi gaster ) is used, it is used in current classifications ( Christidis & Boles 1994; Higgins & Peter 2002) insularis recognized as a distinct species Gerygone.