Red Rail
| Red Rail | |
|---|---|
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| Copy of the 1600 painting attributed to George Hoefnagel | |
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Gruiformes |
| Family: | Rallidae |
| Genus: | Aphanapteryx |
| Species: | A. bonasia |
| Binomial name | |
| Aphanapteryx bonasia (Selys, 1848) |
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| Former range (in red) | |
| Synonyms | |
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The Red Rail or Red Hen of Mauritius, Aphanapteryx bonasia, is an extinct rail. It was only found on the island of Mauritius.
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[edit] Description
The Red Rail, which today is only known from a large number of bones, some descriptions and a handful of drawings and paintings, was a flightless bird, somewhat larger than a chicken (about 50 cm). Its plumage was reddish brown all over, and the feathers were fluffy and hairlike; the tail was not visible in the living bird and the short wings likewise also nearly disappeared in the plumage. It had a long, slightly curved, brown bill and comparatively (for a rail) long legs. Altogether, it resembled a lean kiwi more than a rail. Peter Mundy visited Mauritius in 1638 and described the red hen as follows
"A Mauritius hen is a fowl as big as our English hens, of a yellowish wheaten color, of which we only got one. It hath a big long crooked sharp pointed bill, feathered all over, but on their wings they are so few and small that they cannot with them raise themselves from the ground. There is a pretty way of taking them with a red cap, but this of ours was taken with a stick.[1]"
Marshall described them as follows in 1668:
"Here are also great plenty of Dodos or red hens which are larger a little than our English henns, have long beakes and no, or very little Tayles. Their fethers are like down, and their wings so little that it is not able to support their bodies; but they have long leggs and will runn very fast, and that a man shall not catch them, they will turn so about in the trees. They are good meate when roasted, tasting something like a pig, and their skin like pig skin when roosted, being hard.[2]"
Much of the information about the external appearance of the bird comes from the painting by Joris Hoefnagel, done from a bird in the menagerie of Emperor Rudolph II around 1600. In addition, there are four more or less crude drawings done on Mauritius. More enigmatically, a bird resembling a Red Rail is figured in Francesco Bassano the Younger's painting Arca di Noè ("Noah's Ark"). As Bassano died before the Dutch colony was established on Mauritius in 1598, the origin of the bird is a mystery. Finally, there are some rather crude depictions of what apparently is this bird in three of the 1620s dodo paintings by Roelant Savery. What can be said is that around 1600, possibly earlier, a small number of Red Rails reached Europe.
[edit] Behaviour
The Red Rail is discussed in almost every report about Mauritius from 1602 on; however, the details provided are repetitive and do not shed much light on the bird's life history; rather, they dwell upon the varying ease with which the bird could be caught according to the hunting method and the fact that when roasted it was considered a good substitute for pork. An anonymous Dutchman gave some description of their behaviour in 1631:
"The soldiers [red hens] were very small in stature and slow of foot, so they could be caught easily by hand, their armour or gun was their mouth, which was sharp and pointed, and which they used instead of a dagger, were very naked and [unrecognisable word], not hewing about like soldiers, run about in great disorder, now here, now thee, not being true to each other at all.[3]"
Sir Thomas Herbert described their behaviour towards red cloth in 1634:
"The hens in eating taste like parched pigs, if you see a flocke of twelve or twenties, shew them a red cloth, and with their utmost silly fury they will altogether flie upon it, and if you strike downe one, the rest are as good as caught, not budging an iot till they be all destroyed."
[edit] Extinction
The rail was hunted to extinction in the century after its discovery. The dodo was considered rather unpalatable, but the Red Rail was a very popular gamebird for the Dutch and French settlers. While it could usually make good its escape when chased, it was easily lured by showing the birds a red cloth, which they approached to attack; a similar behavior was noted in its relative, the Rodrigues Rail. The birds could then be picked up, and their cries when held would draw more individuals to the scene, as the birds, which had evolved in the absence of predators, were curious and not afraid of humans. Hoffman, who was on Mauritius in the early 1670s, described such a hunt as follows:
"... [there is also] a particular sort of bird known as toddaerschen which is the size of an ordinary hen. [To catch them] you take a small stick in the right hand and wrap the left hand in a red rag, showing this to the birds, which are generally in big flocks; these stupid animals precipitate themselves almost without hesitation on the rag. I cannot truly say whether it is through hate or love of this colour. Once they are close enough, you can hit them with the stick, and then have only to pick them up. Once you have taken one and are holding it in your hand, all the others come running up as it to its aid and can be offered the same fate."
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As it nested on the ground, pigs which ate their eggs and young probably contributed to its extinction. When François Leguat (1708), who had become intimately familiar with the Rodrigues Rail in the preceding years, came to Mauritius in 1693, he remarked that the Red Rail had already become rare; he was the last source to mention the bird. It can be assumed to have been extinct around 1700. Determination of the rail's status and disappearance is complicated because the local name for the dodo, Todaersen (or dodaersen, "fat-arses") was transferred to the Red Rail, which was just as plump-rumped, with the dodo's impending extinction.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Barnwell 1948
- ^ Khan 1927
- ^ Servaas 1887
- ^ http://dodobooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Cheke-2006-Dodo-date.pdf
- BirdLife International (2004). Aphanapteryx bonasia. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 23 Jun 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is extinct.
- de Sélys Longchamps, Edmond (1848): Résumé concernant les oiseaux brévipennes mentionnés dans l'ouvrage de M. Strickland sur le Dodo. Rev. Zool. 1848: 292–295. [Article in French]
- Leguat, François (1708): Voyages et Avantures de François Leguat & de ses Compagnons, en Deux Isles Desertes des Indes Orientales, etc. 2: 71. Jean Louis de Lorme, Amsterdam. PDF fulltext available at Gallica: search for "Leguat"
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