Crested Serpent Eagles mobbed by Kites in Hong Kong

AJP reports that while on the island of Lamma last Sunday he heard a noise coming from overhead. A battle was in progress between two Crested Serpent Eagles (Spilornis cheela) and three Black-eared (Black) Kites (Milvus migrans or M. lineatus). Although classed as residents, Crested Serpent Eagles are uncommon in Hong Kong and it was a new tick for him. Although we have seen this species in India and Sri Lanka we have not seen it in Hong Kong.

The eagles are considerably bigger than the kites

Crested Serpent Eagle

Geoffrey Herklots in his book Hong Kong Birds, which mainly records his observations in the 1930s, he indicated the likely fate of many of these birds in earlier years:

A Serpent Eagle was shot in the Lam Tsuen valley in January or February 1940 [Herklots’s records were lost while he was interned during the Japanese Occupation] by a Chinese Farmer. The bird weighed 4 lbs 2½ ounces; it was given to a Chinese friend in Hong Kong who ate it…Both La Touche and Caldwell say that this species has a reputation of preying on domestic poultry and it is probable that this bird was shot by the farmer in defence of his birds.

In the 1960s birds of prey of different sizes were being caught alive in Hong Kong or were being brought over the border from China. They were either for the Chinese medicine or the food market. Enterprising bird dealers brought some to the door of the university’s Zoology Department where they might be bought for release. I photographed this one on the floor of Patricia Marshall’s lab where until it could be released a short time later it was attached by a temporary jess to a lab stool. I wonder if it escaped capture and the live market.

The Crested Serpent Eagle is now protected in Hong Kong.

Fluorescent chameleons, salamanders, newts and frogs...and a budgerigar

An increasing number of animals are being found to fluoresce.  Fluorescence happens when a chemical fluorophore absorbs of shorter-wavelength light and them emits some of the absorbed energy as light at a longer-wavelength. In some biological examples, blue light is absorbed and green light is emitted

Why animals fluoresce is the subject of active research. Does the change to a more noticeable colour mean that fluorescence is sometimes involved in signalling to other animals of the same sex, or of  different sex, or of the same species, or to a predator, or to prey? Is it assisting in camouflage, the fluorescent emission matching, say, the emission from plants in the background?

Perception of fluorescence depends on the properties of the photoreceptors of the animal exposed to the fluorescence, so that in the case of proposed signalling between animals of the same species, it would be a requirement to demonstrate that the visual pigments of the eyes of that species can actually pick up the colour.

There is, of course, the possibility that there is no function of the fluorescence at all, that it is just a by-product of a particular molecule used as a pigment or for some other purpose in the skin or other tissue. This is the same argument as to why some creatures from the depths of the sea have bright colours; the production of brightly coloured molecules used by the animal are simply not selected against since there is no predator present that can see them.

A very well argued paper appeared in 2017 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by Justin Marshall (University of Queensland) and Sonke Johnsen (Duke University, North Carolina). The authors explained the background to explaining any function of fluorescence in terms of communication between individuals. They set out criteria that must be satisfied in order for such a role for fluorescence to be accepted. The Budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus, they found from descriptive and experimental studies, fulfilled all the criteria. In short, both males and females prefer to associate with potential mates that fluoresce.

Fluorescence characteristics of the budgerigar
(a,b) White light and UV fluorescent excitation
photographs of front and back of head showing
fluorescent cheek and crown feathers
from Marshall & Johnsen 2017

More recent studies have shown fluorescence from the bony tubercles of the skull of many species of chameleon—just one more feature added to the list of properties of those extraordinary animals. The phenomenon is particular evident in those chameleons living in humid forests ‘known to have a higher relative component of UV light’. The blue light emitted would be in sharp contrast to the brown and green colours reflected by the surroundings.

from Prötzel et al 2018

  

Even more recently came photographs showing fluorescence in a number of amphibians, this time a green emission from blue light (with some species showing emission in response to UV (ultraviolet)).

from Lamb & Davis 2020

The accumulating evidence for fluorescence in a wide range of animals (and plants) raises so many questions as to the molecular mechanisms involved and possible functions, that the only conclusion at present is the inevitable: more research is required.

In the meantime enjoy the pictures.

Lamb JY, Davis MP. 2020. Salamanders and other amphibians are aglow with biofluorescence. Scientific Reports 10, 2821. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-59528-9 

Marshall J, Johnsen S. 2017 Fluorescence as a means of colour signal enhancement. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 372: 20160335. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0335 

Prötzel D, Heß M, Scherz MD, Schwager M, van’t Padje A, Glaw F. 2018. Widespread bone-based fluorescence in chameleons. Scientific Reports 8, 698. DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-19070-7 

A Hong Kong Sunbird fest

Hong Kong birdwatchers and photographers were out in force to see these 'Occasional Visitors' over Chinese New Year. Our Hong Kong correspondent was there, hiking from Shing Mun over Lead Mine Pass to Tai Po Kau.

Mrs Gould's Sunbirds (Aethopyga gouldiae) was what the birders were there to see. When first seen in Hong Kong they were regarded as escapees from captivity but it is now realised that Hong Kong is part of their natural range (from India, Nepal and Bhutan to Bangladesh, China,  Burma, Thailand, Laos and Viet Nam). First described in 1831 by the lawyer and politician Nicholas Vigors (1785-1840) while Secretary of the Zoological Society and pursuing his misguided 'quinarian system' of classification, it was named for Mrs Elizabeth Gould (née Coxon) (1804-1841) the artist wife of John Gould FRS, ornithologist, taxidermist and artist.

Mrs Gould's Sunbird - male

Mrs Gould's Sunbird - male. To show the iridescent feathers of the head

Feeding on the same flowers were 'Resident' Fork-tailed Sunbirds (Aethopyga christinae). Also called Mrs Swinhoe's Sunbird after the wife, Christina, née Lockie, of Robert Swinhoe FRS (1836-1877) who described the species in 1869, this bird in Hong Kong was regarded as a rarity when we lived in Hong Kong in the 1960s. First seen in Hong Kong in 1959, it could for years only be seen at Tai Po Kau. Since then it has spread throughout Hong Kong and on our first return to Hong Kong in 1997 a pair was nesting yards from our room at Robert Black College at the University of Hong Kong.

Fork-tailed Sunbird - male

Female sunbirds are easily overlooked:

Mrs Gould's Sunbird - female

And here are the photographers:

Also around was this Mountain Bulbul (Ixos mcclellandii) once a great rarity in Hong Kong but now regularly spotted:

Mountain Bulbul

A Verditer Flycatcher (Eumyias thalassinus)

Verditer Flycatcher - male

...and a female Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus) showing why it used to be called a bush-robin, a winter visitor to Hong Kong from the north:

Red-flanked Bluetail

Finally, a portrait of Mrs Elizabeth Gould with a pet Cockatiel. As well as illustrating John Gould's publication she had eight children, dying at the age of 39 after the birth of the eighth.

Homing Budgerigars at London Zoo. The Bizarre Memorial to a Cranky Duke

Amongst the stranger sights encountered by a visitor to London Zoo in the late 1950s was the sort of wooden shed/aviary more often seen in the back garden of a suburban house. The aviary had been built close to Three-Island Pond. I never saw any inhabitants but the labels/guidebook told us it was an aviary for homing budgerigars erected in memory of the Duke of Bedford who had died in 1953. The world was informed around the time of my visit that the budgerigars had been confined to the aviary because Sparrowhawks and other predators were catching the birds flying free in Regent’s Park. Eventually, the aviary was removed.

It is difficult to conceive of a more useless exhibit for a modern zoo, and those in the zoo world are utterly amazed that such a thing was once thought desirable. How did the aviary and the ‘homing’ budgerigars come to be there?

Hastings William Sackville Russell
12th Duke of Bedford
by Walter Stoneham
bromide print, 1952. NPG x164005
©National Portrait Gallery, London

When the 12th Duke of Bedford, Hastings William Sackville Russell, died in 1953 the world of aviculture together with the bird fancy, always tugging their forelocks to their aristocratic members, produced glowing obituaries. The duke (not to be confused with his father or his son amongst whom the hated was mutual) had been a noted keeper and breeder of birds throughout his life, regularly publishing articles in Avicultural Magazine and Cage Birds under the junior title he held until his father died, Marquess of Tavistock. He specialised in parakeets and other psittacines, known, inaccurately, in the bird fancy as ‘parrot-like’ birds. What was not mentioned in the obituaries and reminiscences was the Duke’s notoriety as a crank. His very strange world view led him to espouse pacifism, fascism, anti-semitism, christian evangelism and support for nazi Germany throughout the war, conduct for which others were arrested and imprisoned. He was summed up by his eldest son, whom he tried to disinherit, as: ‘The loneliest man I ever knew, incapable of giving or receiving love, utterly self-centred and opinionated. He loved birds, animals, peace, monetary reform, the park [Woburn] and religion’.

His death was mysterious. He was found two days after his disappearance on the estate of his house at Endsleigh near Tavistock in Devon (where he kept many of his birds) having been shot with his own gun. The search involved estate workers, police, soldiers and Royal Marines. Cage Birds (15 October 1953) reported as follows:

It appears that in the early morning of Friday last, Oct. 9, His Grace, who had travelled down to his home (Endsleigh) a few days previously with some Budgerigars to add to his stud of homers established there, went out to shoot a Sparrowhawk which was menacing the birds. While stalking the Hawk he seems to have stumbled when forcing his way through some bushes, the gun going off and inflicting fatal injuries.

Both at Endsleigh and Woburn it was the Duke’s practice to release his homing Budgies very early in the morning unless the weather was foggy or otherwise unfavourable.

The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death after hearing evidence of a shot to the head (The Times 14 October 1953). The lawyer for the family suggested the circumstances to a police superintendent at the inquest: “Assuming that a man was sitting cross-legged watching for something with his gun beside him, if he pulled the gun towards him at this particular place would it be possible for the trigger to catch in any branches?” The reply was “Yes, very possible”.

His eldest son reported in his autobiography that a number of people close to the duke, ‘who had become very depressed during the last months of his life’, thought suicide the more likely explanation for a skilled and safe handler of a shotgun.

The avicultural world then came up with the idea of a memorial, and that idea came to fruition in the form of the aviary for homing budgerigars at London Zoo. The duke had recently published a booklet on establishing colonies of homing or, more accurately, free-flying budgerigars. John James Yealland (1904-1983), Curator of Birds at the Zoo, had previously worked for the Duke of Bedford as aviary attendant.

Wild Budgerigars can be seen in this video:

I just could not help wondering if the memorial to the duke—essentially a garden shed with short-lived inhabitants—was deeply ironic. Was it the equivalent of the £5 left in the will by a millionaire to a despised nephew, or the 1p tip left for a rude waiter? But, no. Press reports stated that it had been built from the subscriptions of budgerigar fanciers; the birds were first released on 18 April 1955. A March 1954 article in the Londonderry Sentinel stated that nine pairs of homing budgerigars had been bought by the Zoological Society from the executor’s of the duke’s estate and:

Site chosen is the old prairie marmots’ compound next to the Three Island Pond Enclosure.

‘The installation of the budgerigars’ home involves much preliminary work.’ Mr John Yealland, curator of birds, said today. ‘First, the 7ft.-high fence lining this enclosure, and two old lime trees in it, will have to come down.

‘The burrows made by many generations of marmots over the past 30 years will have to be filled in.

‘After that, we are putting up a specially designed aviary which will have holes in the roof, in and out of which the budgerigars can fly.’

It was the Avicultrual Society which organised the whole thing. There is a full account, with photographs of those attending the official opening of the aviary by the 13th Duke of Bedford in Avicultural Magazine (61, 3, May-June 1955, 129-130 plus plates).

By June 1957, budgerigars were breeding in the trees of Regent’s Park with press reports indicating the birds fed entirely in the park during summer, returning to the aviary to feed only during the winter. Excess stock was being sent to hospitals, making their homes in the wards and the budgerigars ‘fly in and out of the windows’.

However, as I noted above, the homing budgerigars didn’t last long; Regent’s Park’s Sparrowhawks and other predators discovered them.

The idea of flocks of budgerigars living free during the daytime and returning to the aviary in the evenings did live on. There are reports of a number of budgerigar fanciers attempting to emulate the Duke of Bedford in the 1950s and 60s. The author Roald Dahl had a flock and a hotel in Barbados advertises that it still does. The release of non-native birds into the wild has been unlawful in Britain since 1981.

This map of London Zoo from 1940 shows the site of the marmot enclosure which the homing budgerigar aviary replaced in 1955

The large arrow on this 2019 map of London Zoo (from the opposite direction to that of 1940) shows where the homing budgerigar aviary was situated.

UPDATED 15 January 2022

Duke of Bedford. 1953. Homing Budgerigars. London: Cage Birds

John, Duke of Bedford. 1959. A Silver-Plated Spoon. London: Cassell (and 1960, London: Reprint Society)

Feathers Fly in London. Why on earth was Chalmers Mitchell of London Zoo on the wrong side of a conservation battle of the early 1900s?

Peter Chalmers Mitchell

I have never been able to make up my mind about Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell FRS (1864-1945). At the Zoological Society he was treated as a god; icons of his reign as Secretary between 1903 and 1935 were still around the offices in the 1990s. His biographers and obituarists concentrated almost entirely on his work running the Zoo and in his life in Spain during the civil war rather than as a scientist or writer on biological questions of his day.

The more I read about Mitchell (he adopted his second first name, his mother’s surname, to make a non-hyphenated double-barrelled surname in the Scottish style) I realised he was a skilful political manipulator and self-publicist with modest scientific credentials, even by the standards of the times.

What I did not know was his involvement—clearly on the wrong side—in a major bird protection and conservation measure of the early 20th century. Only when I read William T. Stearn’s (1911-2001) 1981 book on the history of the Natural History Museum a few years ago did I come across the story.

Sir William Flower when Director of the Natural History Museum became concerned at the vast numbers of birds being killed around the world to satisfy the fashion of adorning women’s hats with feathers, wings and even the skins of whole birds. A Bill to prohibit the importation of skins and feathers passed through the Lords but was rejected by the House of Commons in 1908. And the numbers really were vast—millions of birds each year.

Six years later, in 1914, the Trustees of the Museum supported another Bill to suppress the plumage trade on the grounds of protection (the killing of adult birds with young left to die in the nest) and conservation. However, the trade was highly profitable and trade organisations galvanised their supporters against the Society of Protection of Birds, formed specifically to lobby for abolition. A major supporter of the trade was, amazingly, the Selborne Society, named for Gilbert White and Britain’s first national conservation organisation, dedicated to the ‘preservation of birds, plants and pleasant places’. Equally amazingly, Mitchell was fielded by the group formed by the trade to oppose the proposed legislation. Instead he and many of the great and good who were members of the Selborne Society argued in favour of the trade and argued it could be supported by captive breeding: 

…to consider and suggest to those interested the best means to protect, maintain and encourage the increase of all useful species including those used in the feather trade, so as to ensure a regular supply without endangering any.

Stearn takes up the story:

The opponents of the Plumage Bill, then before Parliament, accordingly convened a meeting at Burlington House, Piccadilly, against the proposed legislation. At this meeting C.E. Fagan, Assistant Secretary of the Natural History Museum, Sidney Harmer and Ogilvie-Grant represented the Museum’s Trustees in their attempt to prohibit the import of feathers. Rather surprisingly, Dr (later Sir) Peter Chalmers Mitchell (1864-1945), Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, chose to appear on the platform in support of the plumage traders and, by reason of his office, thereby implied that the Zoological Society likewise supported them against the Natural History Museum and the bird protectionists. Fagan therefore requested Mitchell to state publicly before he addressed the meeting whether he was about to speak in his official capacity as representing the views of the Zoological Society’s Council in opposition to the Bill, or whether he was about to express his own personal opinion. Being pressed for a definite and unequivocal reply, he was forced to admit that he had no mandate from the Zoological Society and attended merely in a private capacity. This was all the Museum representatives wanted. An eye-witness recorded that ‘after the meeting Mitchell, livid with rage, stepped down from the platform and, coming up to where we were sitting, stopped in front of Fagan and positively hissed out “I demand of you a public apology!” He got an appropriate reply but no apology, public or private’. Thereafter Mitchell refused to shake hands or even to speak to Fagan. The retirement of Fletcher in 1919 as Director [of the Museum] provided the opportunity of revenge. The Plumage Bill did not, however, receive royal assent until 1921 and not until 1922 did it become operative.

Fellows of the Zoological Society were clearly disturbed by Mitchell’s behaviour and they found a spokesman in Sir Harry Johnston (1858-1927)--of Okapi fame—who wrote several letters to The Times. One, 18 February 1914, concluded:

It was further announced with some emphasis that an address on the economic preservation of birds by Mr. S. L. Bensusan, presided over by the Countess of Warwick and supported by Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, F. R. S., would take place on February 16. From the brief Press notices of the meeting published to-day, I can discern no reason why bird-lovers should abate their hostility to the unreasonable developments of the plumage trade. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, a very distinguished biologist and the Secretary of the Zoological Society, is president of the Committee for the Economic Preservation of Birds. But unless he disavows the statement made in the pages of the Selborne Magazine that his committee deprecates legislation for tho protection of birds or would postpone it to some vague future period, he is not acting fairly towards the numerous Fellowship of the Zoological Society; for there are, I am convinced, in that society a great many persons besides myself who consider that, if the Zoological Society Is to intervene in the question at all, it should be to range itself on, the side of the Government and of the advisers of tho Government in the Natural History Museum, and assist in bringing forward as soon as possible a measure which shall on behalf of Great Britain close the now open market for the traffic in the skins of rare, beautiful, or useful wild birds.

The Countess of Warwick, incidentally, was Daisy, mistress of the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) and others.

The eventual outcome of the plumage Bill was that the Selborne Society, the first on the scene for conservation in England, was completely eclipsed by the (later Royal) Society for the Protection of Birds which now has more than one million members.

Five years later, in 1919, Mitchell certainly did have his revenge on the staff of the Museum who were sent by the Trustees to oppose him and who challenged his representation of the Zoological Society in 1914. Fagan, an able administrator, had effectively run the Museum under the less than effective efforts of two Directors. However, his pay was low. The Trustees therefore proposed with the the support of scientists in the museum to appoint Fagan as Director for a couple of years until his statutory retirement and the appointment of another scientist to the job. Mitchell organised a protest from the Royal Society and a letter to The Times signed by 20 FRSs. It would have been an easy matter to get them to sign. Here was a proposal to appoint an administrator, who was described as a ‘member of the clerical staff’ to a scientist’s job. The Trustees had to back down but they did appoint Sidney Frederic Harmer—a member of the team opposing Mitchell over the plumage Bill. Harmer, already a strong candidate, had written to Nature in support of Fagan taking over for a few years and had stated that he would not run against him. William Robert Ogilvie-Grant (1863-1924), Curator of Birds at the Museum and the other representative of the Museum who opposed Mitchell wrote to the Times:

[The Trustees] might certainly be supposed to know better what is for the benefit of the Museum than a number of university professors who, however individually able, deal with a side of natural history which has little or no connexion with the making and improvement of museum collections...I served under Owen, Flower, Lankester, and Fletcher, and have had more than thirty years’ experience of Mr Fagan as an enthusiast for the Museum, an encourager of scientific work, and as an administrator, and I should most warmly welcome his promotion to the post of which he has already done so much of the work.

Two hours before he retired the very ill Director, Sir Lazarus Fletcher FRS, in a letter wrote:

The present agitation is probably being stirred by Chalmers Mitchell who is very skilled in the memorialistic method and knows by experience and success all its possibilities. He got his own post by a successful use of the method. Nearly all the signatories have attacked the Trustees in the same way again and again…I have been a Fellow of the Royal Society for thirty years and know the line the Fellows will take.

Despite the open hostility of a number of Fellows of the Zoological Society during the feather war of 1914, Chalmers Mitchell survived as Secretary—he was skilled in packing the Council with supporters—and sailed on. Here indeed was a Scotsman on the make. 

Clarke R. 2005. Informal adult education between the wars. The curious case of the Selborne Lecture Bureau. Birkbeck College, Faculty of Continuing Education Occasional Papers No. 6

Stearn WT. 1981. The Natural History Museum at South Kensington. London: Heinemann

Stephens Island: Lyall’s Wren—Scientific Pride and Prejudice in Victorian London. The Buller-Rothschild Feud

I had not done any homework for a circumnavigation of the south island of New Zealand. The reason I had not done so is simple. We were not meant to make that voyage but the storms in the Southern Ocean were so severe that a tour of the sub-antarctic islands had to be abandoned. As it was I did not notice passing a small island of historical significance to anybody interested in birds and their extinction. Had the sea been calmer in an area with infamously high winds and strong currents, the plan was to launch the Zodiacs and have a close look at the island but it wasn’t and afternoon tea (Devonshire cream tea plus sandwiches and cakes, since you ask) went uninterrupted.

The island is Stephens Island off the northernmost tip of the Marlborough Sounds and known to all reptile enthusiasts as one of the strongholds of the Tuatara. And no, I have never seen a Tuatara in the wild although a familiarity with its diapsid skull was an essential part of classical zoology; most university museums had a specimen. It is also famous as the final refuge and site of extinction of the flightless Lyall’s Wren (Traversia lyalli).

The story of the wren, the lighthouse keeper and the cats has been expanded by some urban myths but the whole story of how the last individuals of this small bird were first discovered in 1894, collected and then wiped out by feral cats only two years later is best described in this Wikipedia article which pulls together the facts and likeliest scenario. On mainland New Zealand the flightless wren had already been wiped out, probably by the Pacific Rat (Rattus exulans) which arrived along with the Maori from Polynesia in the 13th Century.

The scientific name itself is a reminder of the bitter feud it caused between two leading ornithologists of the day, Sir Walter Buller FRS and Walter, later Lord, Rothschild FRS. Naming new species was the name of the game in Victorian ornithology and the name, Traversia lyalli, was  given by Rothschild. The rule of the game is that the first to publish the new name takes the prize. If somebody else publishes a new name later, that name does not stand.

The animosity arose because Buller was shown the first specimen to be collected by the lighthouse keeper, David Lyall. Buller, who recognised it instantly as a new species, borrowed the dead bird  and sent it to the illustrator J.G. Keulemans in London. Buller then sent off a paper to the Ibis, complete with illustration, describing and naming the species as Xenicus insularis. Lyall then collected other specimens but sold them to the dealer, Henry Travers. Travers shrewdly reckoned that Lord Rothschild would be willing and able to pay more than Buller. He was right. Rothschild bought the nine birds and had them shipped to England. Rothschild then rapidly wrote a description of the bird—and named it Traversia lyalli—for a meeting of the British Ornithologists' Club. Ernst Hartert read the paper on behalf of, and in the absence of, Rothschild. Philip Lutley Sclater FRS was both the Club’s President and editor of the Ibis. He told Hartert that Buller’s paper for the Ibis was in the press but Hartert said he could not withdraw the paper without Rothchild’s consent. Well, he would say that, to quote Mandy Rice-Davies; Hartert was on Rothschild’s payroll.

After the Club’s meeting on 19 December 1894, the Bulletin containing Rothschild’s paper was published, astonishingly quickly, 10 days later, on 29 December. Buller’s paper, in the press since before the meeting of the Club, had to wait until April 1895 for publication in the Ibis.

Buller, not surprisingly, was described as incandescent with rage. He continued to call the bird Xenicus insularis for the rest of his life and attacked Rothschild, with whom he had dealt with—and sold bird specimens to—at every opportunity.

Keulemans's illustration for Buller's paper in the Ibis

Keulemans depicted a male and female for Buller's last book -
the Supplement in 1905-06

Looking at Rothschild’s behaviour nearly 125 years after the event, I would have to ask. Was it possible for Hartert to contact Rothschild after the meeting and before publication to tell him what had happened? If so, did he do so? And would Rothschild have had time to withdraw the paper or to change the wording to acknowledge Buller’s real priority and name for the bird? If the answer to the last question is ‘Yes’, then I have Lord Rothschild down for conduct unbefitting a gentleman.

Walter Rothschild

Buller versus Rothschild continued on this and other matters ornithological, with every opportunity being taken in print to have a go at the other. The best analogy I can think of is a Twitter War in slow motion.

The vituperation continued after Buller’s death in 1906. Rothschild’s book, Extinct Birds (Hutchinson: London) was published in 1907. Under literature referring to extinct birds he wrote:

1905-1906. Sir Walter Buller. Supplement to the “Birds of New Zealand."Two volumes. (Though containing very interesting notes on extinct and threatened birds, these two volumes are rather disappointing. They contain very little that is new, and are mainly composed of quotations from other people's writings or letters. Buller's former great book on the Birds of New Zealand was a most important and creditable work, though not without shortcomings. Our knowledge of New Zealand Birds might have been brought up to date in his supplement, but we cannot say that this has been done properly, and errors are frequent.) 

And on the still extant birds, the Chatham Island Robin (Petroica traversi) and Snares Tomtit (P. dannefaerdi):

Sir Walter Buller…has confounded M. traversi and dannefaerdi, and the figure he gave on his plate looks so black, that I do not doubt it represents rather the latter than the former. Of course M. dannefaerdi alone occurs on the Snares, and Buller's traversi from the Snares were all dannefaerdi. Dr. Finsch's statement (Ibis 1888, p. 308) that Reischek's specimen from the Snares "agreed in every respect with specimens from the Chatham Islands" is entirely wrong, for, even if one prefers unscientifically to lump allied forms, one cannot say that a Miro from the Chathams agrees in every respect with one from the Snares. Buller's doubts about the distinctness of the latter might easily have been removed, if he had taken the trouble to compare them, for it does not require any genius to see the differences. I admit that with my present views on geographical forms I would regard the two Miro as sub-species, and call them M. traversi traversi and M. traversi dannefaerdi, but most ornithologists would still consider them to be "good species."  

I may add that Buller…has not quoted my description correctly, for in his rendering are several disturbing misprints, and in the fourth line from the bottom occurs a "not" which ought not to be there, and which makes the sentence incomprehensible. Also the name itself is spelt incorrectly. 

Rothschild’s take on the by-then-extinct Lyall’s Wren story:

I received nine specimens of this new bird, and was not aware that any others had been taken at that time. As I was unable to attend the December meeting, 1894, of the British Ornithologists Club, I asked Dr. Hartert to exhibit the birds in my name. When he had done so and had read the description, the Chairman, Dr. P. L. Sclater, said that the bird had also been received for illustration and description in the Ibis, from Sir Walter Buller, and he asked Dr. Hartert if I would not withdraw my description. Dr. Hartert said that this was unfortunate, but he had no authority to withdraw my description, and he and Dr. Sharpe thought that the proceedings of the meeting should be printed without consideration of any manuscripts which might refer to the same bird. No doubt this was hard luck on Sir Walter Buller, but it would have been equally hard luck for me if he had forestalled me with the new bird. He had only one specimen, I had nine, of both sexes, and I had paid a high price for them, as types of a new bird. My type is in Tring, and, as everybody knows, available for study by any competent ornithologist, while Buller's type was not in any museum, and it was uncertain to whom he would sell it afterwards. I suppose it is now in the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, to which Buller's "third collection," 625 specimens, was sold for a thousand pounds, as Buller himself tells us in his Supplement II, p. 167, under the heading of Glaucopis wilsoni!

On the same page Sir Walter Buller also tells us that his "second collection" was sold to me, but he makes a mistake about the price, as I certainly did not pay a thousand pounds for it. 

I mentioned these unimportant details, because Buller rather bitterly and severely complained about my describing the Stephens' Island Wren, on p. 111 of his supplement. I may only add that of course my name, being published in December, 1894, has the priority over his, which was not published before April, 1895. 

Another well-aired disagreement was whether there were two species (one North Island, one South) of the now extinct Laughing Owl (Sceloglaux albifacies):

Having thus discussed the age of this owl, the question must be considered if it is different from S. albifacies from the South Island. This is less easily done. Buller described it as a "new species," and mentions among the distinctive characters (see above) the colour of the tail. The tail, however, is "skillfully" (as Buller calls it, though I should use a less complimentary adverb) stuck in, and does not belong to a Sceloglaux, but to an Australian Ninox, and also some feathers on the neck are foreign.

There are other examples but that’s enough for anybody. The whole sorry story, the owl, the wren and Buller's sales and attempted sales of specimens to Rothschild (the latter had a flock of live kiwis supplied by the former), can be found in Errol Fuller's book, Extinct Birds. 

Keulemans also illustrated Rothschild's book. A pair of
Lyall's Wrens in the corner of a plate

So while Rothschild thought he was entitled to name the bird because he ‘had paid a high price for them’ we can only marvel at his sense of entitlement. The wren’s recently-studied DNA does though indicate that Rothschild was right to have erected the genus Traversia, separate from Xenicus.

Unfortunately, none of the acrimony was of any use to the bird itself. It was dead; an ex-wren; extinct, lingering only as dead specimens in museums to remind us of the great damage done to the original fauna of New Zealand.

Fuller E. 1987. Extinct Birds. London: Viking/Rainbird.

Galbreath R, Brown D. 2004. The tale of the lighthouse-keeper’s cat: Discovery and extinction of the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli). Notornis 51, 193-200.

Updated 9 April 2019