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Concept
Rodrigues night heron
Summary
The Rodrigues night heron (Nycticorax megacephalus) is an extinct species of heron that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean. The species was first mentioned as "bitterns" in two accounts from 1691–1693 and 1725–1726, and these were correlated with subfossil remains found and described in the latter part of the 19th century. The bones showed that the bird was a heron, first named Ardea megacephala in 1873, but moved to the night heron genus Nycticorax in 1879 after more remains were described. The specific name megacephala is Greek for "great-headed". Two related extinct species from the other Mascarene islands have also been identified from accounts and remains: the Mauritius night heron and the Réunion night heron.
The Rodrigues night heron was robust, its bill was comparatively large, stout and straight, and its legs were short and strong. It is estimated to have been long, and its appearance in life is uncertain. There was marked sexual dimorphism, males being larger. Little is known about its behaviour, but the contemporary accounts indicate that it ate lizards (probably the Rodrigues day gecko), was adapted to running, and although able to fly, rarely did so. Examinations of the known remains have confirmed its terrestrial adaptations; one researcher thought the species flightless but this idea has not been accepted by others. The species could not be found by 1763, and it is thought to have been driven to extinction by human-related factors such as the introduction of cats.
The French traveler Francois Leguat mentioned "bitterns" in his 1708 memoir A New Voyage to the East Indies about his stay on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues from 1691–93. Leguat was the leader of a group of nine French Huguenot refugees who settled on Rodrigues after they were marooned there. Leguat's observations on the local fauna are considered some of the first cohesive accounts of animal behaviour in the wild. In 1873, the French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards described subfossil bird bones from Rodrigues he had received via the British ornithologist Alfred Newton.
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