Necropsar
The Rodrigues starling was 25–30 centimetres (10–12 inches) long, and had a stout beak. It was described as having a white body, partially black wings and tail, and a yellow bill and legs. Little is known about its behaviour. Its diet included eggs and dead tortoises, which it processed with its strong bill. Predation by rats introduced to the area was probably responsible for the bird's extinction some time in the 18th century. It first became extinct on mainland Rodrigues, then on Île Gombrani, its last refuge.
Taxonomy
In 1725, the French sailor Julien Tafforet was marooned on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues for nine months, and his report of his time there was later published as Relation d'île Rodrigue. In the report, he described encounters with various indigenous species, including a white and black bird which fed on eggs and dead tortoises. He stated that it was confined to the offshore islet of Île Gombrani, which was then called au Mât. François Leguat, a Frenchman who was also marooned on Rodrigues from 1691 to 1693 and had written about several species there (his account was published in 1708), did not have a boat, and therefore could not explore the various islets as Tafforet did. No people who later traveled to the island mentioned the bird. In an article written in 1875, the British ornithologist Alfred Newton attempted to identify the bird from Tafforet's description, and hypothesised that it was related to the extinct hoopoe starling (Fregilupus varius), which formerly inhabited nearby Réunion.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Henry_H._Slater%27s_tent_outside_La_Grande_Caverne.jpg/220px-Henry_H._Slater%27s_tent_outside_La_Grande_Caverne.jpg)
Subfossil bones of a starling-like bird were first discovered on Rodrigues by the police magistrate George Jenner In 1866 and 1871, and by the British naturalist Henry H. Slater in 1874. They were found in caves on the Plaine Coral, a limestone plain in south-west Rodrigues. These bones included the cranium, mandible, sternum, coracoid, humerus, metacarpus, ulna, femur, tibia, and metatarsus of several birds; the bones were deposited in the British Museum and the Cambridge Museum. In 1879, the bones became the basis of a scientific description of the bird by ornithologists Albert Günther and Edward Newton (the brother of Alfred). They named the bird Necropsar rodericanus; Nekros and psar are Greek for "dead" and "starling", while rodericanus refers to the island of Rodrigues. This binomial was originally proposed by Slater in an 1874 manuscript he sent to Günther and Newton. Slater had prepared the manuscript for an 1879 publication, which was never released, but Günther and Newton quoted Slater's unpublished notes in their own 1879 article, and credited him for the name. BirdLife International credits Slater rather than Günther and Newton for the name. Günther and Newton determined that the Rodrigues starling was closely related to the hoopoe starling, and they only kept it in a separate genus due to what they termed "present ornithological practice". Due to the strongly built bill, they considered the new species likely the same as the bird mentioned in Tafforet's account.
In 1900, the English scientist George Ernest Shelley used the spelling Necrospa in a book, thereby creating a junior synonym; he attributed the name to zoologist Philip Sclater. In 1967, the American ornithologist James Greenway suggested that the Rodrigues starling should belong in the same genus as the hoopoe starling, Fregilupus, due to the similarity of the species. More subfossils found in 1974 added support to the claim that the Rodrigues bird was a distinct genus of starling. The stouter bill is mainly what warrants generic separation from Fregilupus. In 2014, the British palaeontologist Julian P. Hume described a new extinct species, the Mauritius starling (Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus), based on subfossils from Mauritius. It was shown to be closer to the Rodrigues starling than to the hoopoe starling, due to the features of its skull, sternum and humerus. Until then, the Rodrigues starling was the only Mascarene passerine bird named from fossil material. Hume noted that Günther and Newton had not designated a holotype specimen among the fossils they based the specific name on, and chose the skull from their syntype series of bones as the lectotype; specimen NMHUK A9050, housed at the Natural History Museum, London. Hume also identified other bones depicted by Günther and Newton among museum collections, and designated them as paralectotypes.
Misidentifications
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Necropsar.png/220px-Necropsar.png)
In 1898, the British naturalist Henry Ogg Forbes described a second species of Necropsar, N. leguati, based on a skin in the World Museum Liverpool, specimen D.1792, which was labelled as coming from Madagascar. He suggested that this was the bird mentioned by Tafforet, instead of N. rodericanus from mainland Rodrigues. Walter Rothschild believed the Liverpool specimen to be an albinistic specimen of a Necropsar species supposedly from Mauritius. In 1953, Japanese writer Masauji Hachisuka suggested that N. leguati was distinct enough to warrant its own genus, Orphanopsar. In a 2005 DNA analysis, the specimen was eventually identified as an albinistic specimen of the grey trembler (Cinclocerthia gutturalis) from Martinique.
Hachisuka believed the carnivorous habits described by Tafforet to be unlikely for a starling, and thought the lack of a crest suggested that it was not closely related to Fregilupus, and therefore concluded that the bones described by Günther and Newton did not belong to the bird mentioned by Tafforet. Hachisuka was reminded of corvids because of the black-and-white plumage, and assumed the bird seen by Tafforet was a sort of chough. In 1937, he named it Testudophaga bicolor, with Testudophaga meaning "tortoise eater", and coined the common name "bi-coloured chough". Hachisuka's assumptions are disregarded today, and modern ornithologists find Tafforet's bird to be identical to the one described from subfossil remains.
In 1987, the British ornithologist Graham S. Cowles prepared a manuscript that described a new species of Old World babbler, Rodriguites microcarina, based on an incomplete sternum found in a cave on Rodrigues. In 1989, the name was mistakenly published before the description, making it a nomen nudum. Later examination of the sternum by Hume showed that Rodriguites microcarina was identical to the Rodrigues starling.
Evolution
In 1943, the American ornithologist Dean Amadon suggested that Sturnus-like species could have arrived in Africa, and given rise to the wattled starling (Creatophora cinerea) and the Mascarene starlings. According to Amadon, the Rodrigues and hoopoe starlings were related to Asiatic starlings, such as some species of Sturnus, rather than the glossy starlings (Lamprotornis) of Africa and the Madagascar starling (Saroglossa aurata); he concluded this based on the colouration of the birds. A 2008 study, which analysed the DNA of various starlings, confirmed that the hoopoe starling was a starling, but with no close relatives among the sampled species.
Extant East Asian starlings, such as the Bali myna (Leucopsar rothschildi) and the white-headed starling (Sturnia erythropygia), have similarities with these extinct species in colouration and other features. As the Rodrigues and Mauritius starlings seem to be more closely related to each other than to the hoopoe starling, which appears to be closer to Southeast Asian starlings, there may have been two separate colonisations of starlings in the Mascarenes from Asia, with the hoopoe starling being the latest arrival. Apart from Madagascar, the Mascarenes were the only islands in the south-west Indian Ocean that contained native starlings. This is probably due to the isolation, varied topography and vegetation of these islands.
Description
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Rodrigues_Starling.jpg/220px-Rodrigues_Starling.jpg)
The Rodrigues starling was large for a starling, being 25–30 cm (10–12 in) in length. Its body was white or greyish white, with blackish-brown wings, and a yellow bill and legs. Tafforet's complete description of the bird reads as follows:
A little bird is found which is not common, for it is not found on the mainland. One sees it on the islet au Mât [Ile Gombrani], which is to the south of the main island, and I believe it keeps to that islet on account of the birds of prey which are on the mainland, as also to feed with more facility on the eggs of the fishing birds which feed there, for they feed on nothing else but eggs or turtles dead of hunger, which they well know how to tear out of their shells. These birds are a little larger than a blackbird [Réunion bulbul (Hypsipetes borbonicus)], and have white plumage, part of the wings and tail black, the beak yellow as well as the feet, and make a wonderful warbling. I say a warbling, since they have many and altogether different notes. We brought up some with cooked meat, cut up very small, which they eat in preference to seed.
Tafforet was familiar with the fauna of Réunion, where the related hoopoe starling lived. He made several comparisons between the faunas of different locations, so the fact that he did not mention a crest on the Rodrigues starling indicates that it was absent. His description of their colouration is similar.