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Post by another specialist on Sept 20, 2012 12:34:28 GMT
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Post by Melanie on Sept 20, 2012 17:00:09 GMT
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Post by Melanie on Aug 19, 2017 16:32:33 GMT
There is an illustration by John Smit in Tristram, H. B. (1886). On an apparently new species of duck (Dafila) from the Central Pacific. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London [1886]: 79-80.
(seems that this illustration is only available at Wiley (on Plate VII but not on BHL)
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Post by alexanderlang on Aug 20, 2017 8:24:17 GMT
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Post by alexanderlang on Feb 28, 2020 13:49:17 GMT
The Pintail (Anas acuta) apparently formerly bred in remote Polynesia!
“In his article in the Waterfowl number of the AVICULTURAL MAGAZINE, Dillon Ripley mentions a duckling I received some years ago from Flint Island, which when reared proved to be a fine male Pintail. I believe that a good many stray Ducks from the Northern Hemisphere land on the Pacific Islands, and occasionally, as Ripley suggests in the case of Coues’ Gadwall, give rise to a sedentary and eventually inbred race. I have reliable information that Shovelers in winter plumage have vistited both the Marquesas and the Tuamotu on several occasions, and that Pintail have been seen on Atiu in the Cook Group, south-west of Tahiti.”
This account was later reproduced and the Pintail had turned into a Gadwall by Greenway (James C. Greenway, Jr: Extinct and vanishing birds of the world. Dover Publications, 2nd Edition 1967), and this error was then reproduced over and over again.
The population we deal here with probably wasn't an endemic race or something but nevertheless a native one.
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