Chatham Rail

Chatham Rail
Chatham Rail
Illustration by Keulemans
Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gruiformes
Family: Rallidae
Genus: Cabalus
Hutton 1874
Species: C. modestus
Binomial name
Cabalus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)
Synonyms

Gallirallus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)
Rallus modestus
(Hutton, 1872)

The Chatham Rail (Cabalus modestus) is an extinct species of bird in the Rallidae family. It was endemic to New Zealand.

Illustration from 1907
Illustrations of the head

Cabalus modestus was endemic to Chatham, Mangere and Pitt Islands, New Zealand[1]. It was first discovered on Mangere in 1871, and 26 specimens collected there are known from museum collections. It became extinct on the island between 1896 and 1900. The species is also known from 19th century bones from Chatham and Pitt Islands. It is likely to have occurred in scrubland and tussock grass.

Threats

Its extinction was presumably caused by predation by rats and cats (which were introduced in the 1890s), habitat destruction to provide sheep pasture (which destroyed all of the island's bush and tussock grass by 1900), and from grazing by goats and rabbits1. On Chatham and Pitt Islands Olson[2] has suggested that its extinction resulted from competition with the larger Dieffenbach's Rail Gallirallus dieffenbachii (also extinct), but the two species have been shown to have been sympatric on Mangere.[3]

References

  1. ^ Marchant and Higgins (1993)
  2. ^ Olson (1975c)
  3. ^ Tennyson and Millener (1994).

External links


Stub icon This Gruiformes-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.