KARL SHUKER: SONNERAT'S NON-EXISTENT PENGUINS (AND KOOKABURRA) IN NEW GUINEA

Penguins in New Guinea? Surely not! Karl Shuker exposes an extraordinary tale of scientific deception within the archives of 18th-Century crypto-ornithology.

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KARL SHUKER - SYLVIORNIS AND THE DYNASTY OF THE DU

Karl Shuker explores the very curious (and sad) fate of a real-life avian demi-god whose tasty flesh brought about its untimely demise - from deity to dinner!

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KARL SHUKER - SRI LANKA'S DEVIL BIRD

Which winged cryptid from Sri Lanka emits a hideous cry graphically described as sounding like the shrieks of a child being slowly strangled??  Read Karl Shuker's latest ShukerNature blog post and find out!

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ROBERT SCHNECK: Tudor mystery bird

Hi Jon,

This is a page from the Bodleian Library's Tudor Pattern Book (c. 1520-1530), which has paintings that were used by illuminators, embroiderers, and other craftsmen. Most of the animals are labeled (e.g. 'A dog') or identifiable by their actions (e.g. the reptilian beaver biting off his scrotum), but the hoofed bird in this picture escapes me.

I don't understand what the writing means or recognize the bird as a heraldic, mythical or symbolic animal (a hoofed bird might, incidentally, explain the Devil's footprints of 1855). I'm hoping bloggo readers can identify it.

WEIRD INDIAN BIRD

Vaishali Sangma took a photo of this weird bird in the Garo Hills. It looks like a young hornbbill of some sort to me. None of the Garo guys can identify it. Can any of our readers?

ONCE AGAIN ITS "IDENTIFY THIS BIRD" TIME

ONCE AGAIN, IT'S IDENTIFY THAT BIRD TIME

MYSTERY BIRD IN IOWA

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

IDENTIFY THIS BIRD (Woodpecker? Pah!)

YOUTUBE BLURB: A friend and I saw this bird this morning and don't know what it is .. it allowed us to walk up to it and record with an iPhone for a minute before it flew off. Maybe some kind of woodpecker I don't know but it had a long beak. I'm not a bird guy so maybe some enthusiast or bird watcher can identify to what genus this little guy belongs.

CARL PORTMAN: Wot's that bird?

Corinna,

Okay – third attempt and you’ll get it this time. Isn’t it lovely?

Carl x

CARL PORTMAN: Challenge to Corinna

Corinna,

This is the very poorest of a set of photographs I have of a bird growing in several stages of development. You are a ‘bird expert’ so I am going to see how long before you identify it. So, give it your first punt...

Only ONE guess each time...

Carl

Dear Carl,

As I sit here stroking my chin looking at the photo, with a look of intent concentration etched across my face, methinks this could be a tricky one. Another slurp from my coffee mug and I would have to ask, however - from a scientific point of view you understand - what is the box behind the bird (for scaling purposes) and was this photo taken chez vous or at a ‘bird kindergarten’ in a zoo?

Two quite important questions perhaps, but even if those questions were answered it would probably still leave that furrowed look upon my brow for I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what sort of bird this little creature would grow up to be once it donned a suitable set of feathers and proper wings. But for the record, I don’t reckon it is a wren.

One guess a day eh? You are a hard taskmaster...erm, uhm, a bird born without down...hmm ...my guess for today is...a jay. I am right aren’t I! I get a badge for extreme cleverness don’t I?

love as always

Corinna

MYSTERY CHINESE BIRD

TWO VIEWS OF MYSTERY BIRD

MYSTERY BIRD IN THE BRONX

From YouTube: 'This mystery bird, possibly a Saffron Finch has made a few appearances in my yard. If anyone has any ideas about what it may be, I would love to hear it. Thanks.'

DALE DRINNON: The Great Auk and the Greater Auk

In this case there is something of a muddle to clean up, with the case of a well-known extinction at the hand of humans that might not have been so complete, conflation of an unusual cryptid ordinarily lumped in with a larger but widely reported cryptid category, and a very obscure connection to a generally uncirculated piece of local folklore from a far-distant place that provides the substantiation to an otherwise daft idea.

In this case the more widely known cryptid is called the Boobrie, which has made the migration to several Fantasy role-playing games (as have several other legendary creatures).

There is a section about it in the book In Search of Lake Monsters by Peter Costello (1974) and several sources consider it to be a form of Water Horse based on assumption alone. Costello speaks of it on page 134. In this case it was like a great northern diver (loon) with an extra white stripe on its head and neck, the back being otherwise dark, but with a white breast.

In the quoted sighting from the 1860s the neck was two feet eleven inches long and the circumference was two feet (meaning about eight inches thick). The beak was seventeen inches long and hooked at the end. It had large black webbed feet with claws and it was rumoured to bellow like a bull and eat lambs and otters.

The Wikipedia and Answers.com entries on the Boobrie are not very informative: they state that:

The boobrie is a mythical water bird of Scottish Highlands folklore. It is said to be similar to a great northern diver, but with white markings and the ability to roar.

The creature is the metamorphosed form of the each uisge [Wikipedia questions this as unverified] and haunts lochs and salt wells. The Boobrie is a fabulous giant water-bird who haunts the lakes and salt-wells of Argyllshire (now Strathclyde). It has webbed feet and a harsh voice, and is capable of gobbling up sheep and cattle.

I noticed the change from otters to cattle in the last statement.

One of the things that featured in Boobrie reports was the allegation that it went ashore and left huge three-toed tracks: for that reason I had asked Ivan Sanderson in a letter sent before he died if he thought it was a type of Three-toes.

I received no reply but in fact he did die very shortly after that, and I suspect that would have been what he thought anyway.

I subsequently made the suggestion that a type of Great Auk blown up twice the ordinary dimensions would match the dimensions of the Boobrie's head and neck pretty exactly, and that it would be the closest to the description of the beak as long and thick with something of a hook at the end.


That is where the matter was left for several years until it came up again at the Frontiers of Zoology group, and then there was a corroborating matter of a similar Inuit legendary creature from around Alaska, said to be an amphibious seabird as large as a man, black on the back and white in front, and said to be the lover of Sedna, controller of the creatures in the sea (there is also a Thunderbird form for the legendary bird in question, but that is a separate matter).

I found a mention of the legend in the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (1959, I own a copy), but better still, at that point in the search I found actual depictions of the unknown bird in question (the sculpture shown here was the best one)

During the Age of Mammals and about the time that there actually were giant penguins such as Sanderson mentions, there were other swimming birds at least as large in the North Pacific: these were related to cormorants and are called Plotopterids. Very meagre fossil evidence also suggsts that there was a similarly large great auk in the Atlantic at the same time. In this case I think the testimonial evidence does indicate that there was such a thing as a Greater Auk, of about twice the dimensions of the more usual Great Auk, much rarer but exterminated in Scotland at about the same time the last Great Auk reports were being recorded there. About the size of a Plotopterid or a giant Penguin, and some of them persisted on the far end of the Arctic Ocean, around Alaska. Whether there are any left there (or indeed if there are still any Great Auks remaining in the same general area) is another matter that is unresolved because the testimonial evidence in more recent decades is negligible.

[Note: the Boobrie illustration I used was from a FRPG site and I chose it as the best among several candidates. I have amended it very slightly in order to restore the actually-reported hooked end to the bill, but I have left the original artist's name on it. If the artist has any complaints about my doing that, the decision was mine alone and done for the sole purpose of bringing the illustration more in line with tradition. The other illustrations I saw were all wading-bird Diatrymas, which is specifically NOT what was being described]

NEIL ARNOLD: Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?

I have known Neil for fifteen years now, since he was a mod schoolboy with ambitions for adventure and I was an earnest young hippy who merely wanted to start a club for people interested in unknown animals. Nothing much has changed over the years; we are just both a tad older....

Whilst on my way to conduct a talk recently in Orpington, Kent, I came across an unusual sight, which I hope some readers of this blog can help me with. I’m sure it’s nothing unusual but... I was strolling along a busy road around 7:15 pm; a nice sunny evening, but when I looked to my right up a cul-de-sac, I noticed it was covered with crows. Now, this made for quite a strange sight because the birds were not spilling onto the road I was walking on, or onto fences or up in trees; they simply littered the cul-de-sac. They did not appear to be feeding on anything and there were literally 30-40 of these birds just standing there.

Secondly, on Thursday July 9th 2007 I was awoken around 7:00 am by a squawking noise. I live in an historic apartment, top floor, over-looking a castle. I sat bolt upright and saw on the window ledge a large, black crow. Suddenly, the bird turned to look at me and then tapped four times on the window and then flew off. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing sinister about these two encounters, and I doubt Brandon Lee was about to leap out from behind a bush, but if anyone can shed any light or has had a similar experience I’d like to hear it.

GLEN VAUDREY: The hverafuglar Iceland’s hot-spring bird

Until fairly recently I had never even heard of the hverafuglar, Iceland’s very own mystery hot spring-dwelling bird.

Unsurprisingly for an island renowned for its geothermal activity Iceland has a large number of hot water springs and pools, in 1910 they numbered some 700 in total. The water in these pools goes from bath water warm to hot enough to boil you alive, dangerously there is little in the way to forewarn you of the exact temperatures of the steaming pools, so it’s best not to jump in to the first one you see. So it would seem on face value that these thermal pools would not be the first place that you would expect to find a mystery bird, with the possible exception of perhaps a parboiled fowl floating on the surface. But it is these same hostile waters that you have to look for sightings of the hverafuglar over the years

The first written reports of these birds are to be found in Dithmars Blefkan’s Islandia, sive populorum & mirabilium quae in ea Insula repriuntur accuratior descriptio published in Leiden, Holland in 1607. Dithmars tells of the red-coloured ducks that he saw first hand on a visit to Iceland in 1563, he watched these ducks from afar swimming around in the pools of boiling water, if they were approached they would dive below the bubbling water not resurfacing until the coast was clear.

By the 18th century the description of the birds had changed a little they were now described as being similar to small ducks, jet black in colour with white circles around their eyes. While their colour may have changed their habit of swimming around the waters of thermal pools had not and they would still dive below the boiling waters for safety rather than fly away. Their peculiar abilities and behaviour led to the belief in some more rural parts that the birds were in fact the souls of the dammed who had been cast down to swim in those boiling waters by way of punishment.

Dammed souls or not sightings of these remarkable birds would continue well into the 20th century. In 1912 two boys at Hengill in the north east of Iceland spotted some hverafuglar describing the birds as about the size of a small duck, a dark peaty brown in colour, except for their neck and breast which were lighter in shade, the two boys noted that when the birds flew they beat their wings rapidly, lest you think that these birds were not true hverafuglar the boys also watched them swimming in the boiling hot waters of the spring, something that the boys knew better than to try themselves.

The most recent recorded sightings that I have been able to find have come from the hot springs at Reykir, Ölfus when a hverafuglar was witnessed as recently as 1940.

If anyone else has heard of recent reports of these wondrous birds I would be delighted to know the details.

GUEST BLOGGER IVAN MACKERLE: Hunting for the Elephant Bird

We are very pleased to welcome the legendary Czech cryptozoologist, adventurer, and explorer Ivan Mackerle to the CFZ blogging family. He has been an inspiration to us all, and we were very glad to be able to finally meet him at last November's Unconvention. Today he tells us about an expedition in search of the elephant bird of Madagascar...

Do the pieces of eggshells that people in Madagascar still find today come from the legendary elephant bird? Does the monster still live in the midst of the forest? We were full of curiosity as we set out for an adventurous trip.

Half-ton colossus

"It was about fourteen feet high from the ground to the bill, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's - not out of sight of each other like those of a hen.

The skeleton of an elephant bird
compared to the skeleton of an ostrich
in the Muzeum Tsimbazaza in Antananarivo -
the capital of Madagascar

Its plumage was fine - none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich - more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. And then it was he began to cock his comb at me and give himself airs, show signs of a nasty temper...and then he kicked me. It was like a cart-horse. I got up, and, seeing he hadn't finished, I started off full tilt with my arms doubled up over my face. But he ran on those gawky legs of his faster than a racehorse, and kept landing out at me with sledgehammer kicks and bringing his pickaxe down on the back of my head. I made for the lagoon, and went in up to my neck. He stopped at the water, for he hated getting his feet wet, and began to make a shindy, something like a peacock's, only hoarser. He started strutting up and down the beach.”

This is how H.G.Wells, the English classic of science fiction, described the meeting of a shipwrecked mariner with the prehistoric elephant bird. But his story “Aepyornis Island” is not too fantastic. Such a bird actually once lived on the island of Madagascar. People wrote about it in fairy-tales and also in old travelogues. The traveler Marco Polo was told by natives that a bird called the Ruh lived on the island and was similar to an eagle but was much larger. They said it could kill an elephant. It would grasp the elephant in its claws, take it up and than drop it. The bird wold slice open the elephant`s stomach with its beak and eat the entrails.

Giggling scientists

It did not take long for the world to come to believe in the existence of these giant birds. Doubtful voices of skeptical scientists were silenced in 1850 when an Arabic merchant Abbadi brought three intact eggs and several bones of a giant bird to France. It was the zoological sensation of the 19th century.

The eggs, which natives used to find in the bush
had a volume of ten litres

The egg had a volume of ten litres, which equals the contents of approximately one hundred and eighty hen's eggs. During the following ten years the French paleontologists managed to find enough bones to allow them to reconstruct the entire skeleton. It become apparent that - in life -the bird had looked like an ostrich with strong legs. It was three meters high and weighed half a ton. But it could not fly, let alone carry an elephant. But it would still have been dangerous to man. With a blow from its strong beak the bird could crush the human skull, and kill a man with a single kick. Scientists called it Aepyornis, but they could not determine when it went extinct.

At first they thought it was during prehistory, but than they came up with a finding that changed their ideas. They found a bronze ring on the leg of Aepyornis with some mysterious signs. Soon the scholars found out, that the signs on the ring came from the epoch about the oldest city-civilization of India, Mahendzo-Daru – from five thousand years ago. Other findings gradually reduced this date and today it is thought the bird could have lived as late as the 17th century. However, the natives keep worrying the zoologists by saying that the eggs they sometimes find in moors and dunes of the southern part of the island look as if they were laid only recently.

What if the scientists are wrong and the elephant bird still survives somewhere in the far away parts of the island?

Will we find it?

For many years I have been passionately engaged in looking for unknown and supposedly extinct animals, such as the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot. No small wonder that our group set out to search for the legendary elephant bird. We were an experience-proven group. Jirka Skupien, Jarda Prokopec, my son Danny Mackerle and me. Past objects of our expeditions include the wild man/hobbit nittaewo of Sri Lanka, the potentially dangerous tatzelwurm of the Austrian Alps and the Death Worm of the Mongolian Gobi Desert. Pascal Gui, a native Malagasy now living in Prague, joined us in the search for the giant bird. He studied journalism in the Czech Republic and he speaks Czech well, so he made an excellent interpreter for us.

We wanted to go through the southwestern coast of the island and explore the out-of-the-way places around the mouth of Ilinta River. We were lucky from the very start. A native from Tulear showed us a giant Aepyornis egg. We looked at it with reverence and examined it from all sides. It was truly magnificent. It did not seem to be very old, so we asked him where he had found it. The bird could not be far from the nest. At first the native hesitated to tell us but a bundle of bank notes finally opened his mouth. He pointed at a place on the map in the area of sands near a small village called Androka.

Surprise in the dunes

We were driving for an entire day. The road was in terrible condition with deep holes and huge stones. At some places it reminded me of a hiking trail somewhere in a rock city, or the dry bottom of a river. Occasionally we had to utilize the four wheel drive. There was dry and thorny bush all around us. Finally the bush disappeared and we had a beautiful view – blinding yellow dunes spreading far in all directions. We stopped in a small grove of treelike cacti and raffia palms to build camp. Impatient Jirka grabbed his camera bags and went scouting. We drunk a few gulps of warmish water, took our backpacks and ran after him. Jarda took a spade - just in case there was an Aepyornis skeleton sticking out of the sand. We feel like we were in the Sahara. Our feet sunk into the fine sand, the sun shone mercilessly and hot haze of fata morgana hovered above the dunes.

We separated into an extended order and slowly walk among the hilly sand dunes. I looked for the highest place to be able to see the surroundings and then I heard Pascal shouting. He had found something!

Shells from a broken egg of the elephant bird
layed right on the surface of a sand as if they
had been laid there only recently

We ran to him and could not believe our eyes. The plateau of one long sand dune was covered with a number of shells. They looked like scraps from a porcelain mug but they came from a broken egg of the elephant bird, or rather from multiple eggs. We did not have to dig them out of the sand because they were right on the surface as if they had been laid there only recently. Had young birds hatched out of them? Or had the eggs just been broken by something? We crawled on our knees, and looked for matching scraps. We would have liked to compose at least one whole egg. In our collector´s fervor we forget about the world.

The native woman stopped several feet
from us, and looked at us with curiosity.

“The natives are coming,” said Danny. And they were. A weird procession was walking on the crest of a sand dune – women carrying loads of wood on their heads. They walked upright and as light as if they felt no loads on heads. Sometimes, they carry goods to the market, at other time a bucket with water or a pack of bricks. One might wonder how their thin necks can hold the burden. Their hands remain free so they seem light even with a heavy basket on their head. They develop a noble poise and a charming gait. The women walking on the sand dune stopped and looked toward us. Some of them separated and came down to us. They saw we were whites and wanted to know what we were looking for there. They stopped several feet from us, put aside their plastic buckets with wood and looked at us with curiosity.

“Salam,” we greeted them. The women had a cheerful light in their eyes and started murmuring something. However, our conversational skills came to an end; we did not know another Malagasy word. When we failed to respond, they realised we did not understand and started arranging something. They must have been talking about us because they kept looking at us and laughing out loud. One of them started singing, swinging in the rhythm and wiggling her hips. She playfully smiled at us and uncovered her shining white teeth. She radiated energy and sensuality. Still wiggling, she turned her back to us, rolled up her skirt and pantomimed motions of sexual intercourse. Taken aback, we watched her chocolate brown buttocks.

The other women laughed hard. Our embarrassment seemed ridiculous to them, they must have been accustomed to different reactions from their men. We quickly recovered and called Pascal who was digging in the sand nearby trying to find a whole egg or even bones. He came and translated our “witty” sentences. After a while, conversation was at full speed and our meeting ended with prospect of hope. We were invited to dinner in their village.

Food for the whole village

We arrived to the village before sunset. It was only a few primitive shacks, under coconut palms right on the seashore. Only then did we learn that the girl who had invited us for dinner was the daughter of the village chief. She ceremoniously lit a lamp and brought food – a giant three-kilogram lobster and a bowl of manioc. We were hungry and the fine lobster meat quickly disappeared in our mouths. We were joking about the ironical situation: We did not eat anything the previous night , talked about a simple hot dog for hours and just then we were having a royal dinner that would cost at least thousand crowns in Europe. Lobster is gourmet speciality and we were eating it there to satisfy hunger..

After dinner we were introduced to the chief and got to explain the purpose of our trip. We expected to hear some stories from him indicating that some last birds might be hidden here some places, but we were disapointed. The chief did not confirm it. If someone had seen the giant bird, we would have known about it. He had not even heard the neighbouring tribes talk about it. We are interested at least in legends – so we asked when was the last time Aepyornis lived there. He remembered that in his childhood he used to hear that fathers of their grandfathers hunted this bird. He is said to have been slow and clumsy, so he was easy prey. By rough calculation, we learned it was about one hundred years ago, which is not very long! We regained hopeful that the bird did survive some place well-hidden from people. While the chief´s daughter took away our plates, we made jokes that if the tribes had not exterminated the bird, but rather bred it like hens, they would have enough to eat now. One egg would feed the whole village.

The hideout is empty


The next day we set out for the delta of Ilinta River. It is a large area of forest marshes that is absolutely inaccessible most of the year. Before the trip we read about some weird larynx squeaking being heard here. If a couple of the remnants of this bird species truly survived today, it could only be there. But it was a dry period when we were there and the river was dried up. Thick bushes and trees prevented us from scouting. Our jeep was scratched from boughs and we proceeded very slowly. Quite often we had to turn back and try another road. Finally we realised that walking would be faster. Although we were using a machete, the journey was difficult and exhaustive. It was likely that no human foot had ever trod these places. At night we tried to record Aepyornis´s voice. But we heard no screeches and the tape remained empty. We did not give up and kept looking for some traces during the following days – maybe a print of a big three-toad foot in the sand, a piece of feathers or perhaps some droppings. But we found nothing.

Gradually we realised that such a big bird could hardly be hiding there. The former high forests had vanished and the entire area was covered with thorny bushes and brushwood. The head of a three-meter high bird would stick out of the bushes. At last, we have seen the elephant bird after all. In the museum Tsimbazaza in the capital city of Madagascar we at least got to examine its skeleton.

The former high forests in the land of Aepyornis had vanished and the
entire area is covered with thorny bushes and brushwood.

MYSTERY PARROTS OF THE WORLD

This is an article that Richard and I wrote some years ago for a magazine which then proceeded to go spectacularly bust. As far as I know it was never published, or if it was, I don't think more than a handful of copies of the magazine escaped the warehouse before the rest were pulped. The CFZ Coalition is about responsible pet keeping as well as everything else we do, and we feel that the keeping of exotic pets - IF DONE PROPERLY AND RESPONSIBLY - can be a very positive and ethical thing, so this article pushes several different buttons. Not bad for something we wrote seven years ago and then forgot about!

Mystery parrots of the world

by Jonathan Downes and Richard Freeman

Cryptozoology is the study of unknown animals. This term was first coined by Professor Bernard Heuvelmans - a Belgian zoologist - in the 1950s. Although it may seem surprising to some that there are still unknown animals waiting to be discovered at the very beginning of the 21st century, this is in fact a case. We are two of the only professional cryptozoologists in the world, and for over a decade now we have been running an organisation called the Centre for Fortean Zoology which is the world's largest mystery animal research group.

If you say the words ` mystery animal` to most people they will either gaze at you blankly, or mention one of these three creatures - the yeti, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster. Whilst it is beyond argument that these are the most famous mystery animals in the world ( if that is not a complete oxymoron), there are many others. Every continent on earth has its animal mysteries, and is our job to try and solve as many as we can.

That's all very well, I hear you say. All very interesting, but what has all this that to do with parrots? In this article we will take you on a journey to some of the world's more far flung places, introduce you to some of the mystery parrots in the world, and endeavour to solve some of the parrot world's most enduring mysteries.

THE CAROLINA PARAKEET

This was the only species of parrot native to North America. The Carolina parakeet was a member of the conure family. They appeared somewhat similar to the Jenday conure. Their bodies were bright green, with a yellow head splashed with brilliant orange. From head to tail, they were about twelve inches long. Their beaks were sharp and quite strong for their size, apparently for opening tough- shelled seeds such as the cocklebur. Their eggs were light greenish white in color. Many females laid their eggs together, with each laying two or three. Parakeets would occasionally breed in captivity, but seldom with much success.

They lived in enormous flocks across much of the United States east of the Ohio River. In his 1969 study of the decline and extinction of this remarkable bird, George Laycock wrote: "As we tracked the vanished bird it seemed unreal that the parakeets had once flown in colorful flocks along the nearby Ohio river. Where a traveler saw one parakeet, he was likely to see a flock of a dozen or more. If disturbed in their feeding, they flashed into the sky as if all were triggered by the same instantaneous force."

Sadly for the species, they soon found that the crops of the farms of the European settlers provided much tastier pickings than the native plants, and they soon began to be regarded as a pest. However, they were pest without any great instinct for self-preservation. A farmer only had to shoot one individual for the rest of the enormous flock to fly around aimlessly, as if in grief. In that way they were easily picked off by farm labourers with shot guns. These birds were also collected for their colorful feathers and because the young birds were considered good to eat. It is speculated that habitat destruction may have also contributed to their decline. By the 1890's, the parakeets were quite uncommon, and collectors eagerly caught the few remaining birds to sell them to zoos. The last known pair of parakeets were called "Incas" and "Lady Jane." They lived in the Cincinnati Zoo for some 35 years. In the late summer of 1917, Lady Jane passed away, leaving her mate listless and mournful. Alone, and the last of his kind, Incas quietly "died of grief" on February 21, 1918.

However, rumors of their continued existence have surfaced intermittently ever since. In 1926, Charles E Doe saw several pairs at Grapevine Hammock, Okeechobee, Florida, and stole some of their eggs. The National Audubon Birds Society wardens for the Santee Swamp area of South Carolina reported the species on several occasions in the 1930s, andsightings of animals which appeared to be the species were made regularly up until the beginning of the second world war. Sadly, even if the Carolina parakeet had survived in small numbers in the Santee Swamp, they were doomed for extinction because the Swamp was destroyed in the late 1930s to make way for a hydro-electric power plant. However, there are still swamps in that part of the country which are very little known and it is not impossible that this beautiful birds still lingers on in small numbers.

However - like an equally iconic bird; the passenger pigeon - its very habits when alive do tend to suggest that its continual survival is unlikely. Both birds lived in huge flocks, and whilst the social and behavioural mechanisms of both species remain obscure, we know from studies of other birds who live in large social groups, that they are unlikely to be able to adapt to living in isolation. Sadly, it looks probable that the Carolina parakeet is lost forever.

THE AUSTRALIAN NIGHT PARROT

The Night Parrot Pezoporus occidentalis is one of Australia's most intriguing birds and possibly its least known. It lives in remote parts of the continent, comes out at night and runs along the ground like a quail.

The Night Parrot is a medium sized bird, about 23 cm long. It is mottled yellowish-green and dark brown over most of the body, with the lower belly and under tail coverts yellow. There is a pale yellow stripe through the middle of the wing. This species closely resembles the Ground Parrot Pezoporus wallicus of coast southeastern and southwestern mainland and Tasmania. It differs by lacking the orange band on the forehead across the base of the upper mandible, a noticeably shorter tail, and shorter, straighter claws on the toes.

The first known specimen of the Night Parrot was collected by John Mcdouall Stuart in October 1845, north of Coopers Creek, far northern South Australia, as part of an expedition led by Charles Sturt. The Night Parrot was not formally named until 1861, when John Gould described it as Geopsittacus occidentalis, based on a bird collected in 1854 near Mount Farmer, Western Australia. Until the 1870s, sightings appeared to be very occasional. They became rarer from the mid 1880s, stopping almost completely by 1900. In 1990, a dead specimen was found at the side of a road in southwestern Queensland. Seven separate sightings were made in 1992 and 1993 a short distance north of where the specimen was found, but since then the species seems to have disappeared again.

The exact status of this bizarre little bird - who is surprisingly closely related to the budgerigar - is unknown. Over the last few decades it has been described as common, threatened, extinct, and some people have even suggested that the species per se doesn't actually exist at all. Whatever your viewpoint, it is undeniable that the Australian night parrot is a genuine enigma, and furthermore one which deserves some serious scientific study.

ON SATURDAY 17 September 2006, Robert ‘Shorty’ Cupitt, the ranger-on-duty of Diamantina National Park in south-west Queensland, was grading an interior road of the reserve when the blade of his vehicle exposed the yellow underbelly of a bird he didn’t recognise. As it eventually transpired, it was a deceased Night Parrot— only the second specimen to be found in nearly 100 years.

THE JAMAICAN RED PARROT

Another fascinating parrot mystery comes from the Caribbean island of Jamaica. In 1996 bird expert Errol Fuller found a painting at a London antiques fair. He immediately recognised it as being by George Edwards (1694-1773), a well-known painter of birds. It particularly interested him because not only was it an unknown painting by Edwards, but it also appear to show an unknown species of bird. The painting was accompanied by an inscription and a letter (written on the reverse of the painting).

These identified the subject of the painting as a bird lent to the painter by Alexander Russell. It had been shot in Jamaica, dried and brought over to England where Edward painted it in 1764. He said that the people of Jamaica had never actually recollected seeing a bird of this type before and speculated that it must have been very rare. So rare in fact that this is the only sighting on record. It appears to be very similar to an Amazon parrot, but the striking red plumage doesn't correspond with any other species known. It has been suggested by Dr Karl Shuker - a British cryptozoologist - that this is an erytheristic colour morph of a known species, or even more excitingly and a specimen of a species which we must now presumed be extinct.

The current whereabouts of the original stuffed specimen is unknown, and we do not know whether it has survived into the 21st century.

THE GLAUCOUS MACAW

The Hyacinth Macaw (Andorhynchus hyacinthinus) is well known because of its beautiful blue color and its status as the largest parrot in the world. Closely related is the highly endangered Lear's Macaw (Andorhynchus leari). However, there was once a third member of this genus, the Glaucus Macaw (Andorhynchus glaucus). At the end of the 18th century explorers reported seeing this large turquoise blue macaw as they traveled the Uruguay River in south-central South America, but it is generally believed that this, the third large species of blue macaw was becoming scarce by the end of the 18th century as their main food plant - the chatay palm - slowly disappeared. The species was generally believed to have become extinct at the beginning of the 20th century, but in nearly every decade since its supposed extinction a few sightings trickled in to perplex the ornithological establishment. In 1992 one of a pair of Lear's Macaws was identified as a female Glaucus Macaw by a number of parrot experts. Other experts, however disagreed and dismissed the episode as an unfortunate bout of wishful thinking by self-styled experts who really should have known better.

However, there is hope for this beautiful species. As recently as 1978 a closely related species - The Spix's Macaw - was rediscovered in the wild after being thought extinct for the best part of a century.

THE INDIGO WINGED PARROT AND THE BALD PARROT

More hope for those who believe that The Glaucus Macaw and other supposedly extinct species may yet be rediscovered came in July 2002, when the Associated Press announced an exciting rediscovery. After a gap of ninety years the Indigo Winged Parrot has been rediscovered near the summit of the highest volcano in Colombia. An expedition from Bogota University found the flock of 14 indigo-winged parrots in the Andes. The bird has only been sighted once before, near the peak of the same volcano in 1911. The Times says seven of the birds were captured and their remains are on display in America but notes of their breeding habits were not taken. The team from Bogota University are now taking notes, photographs and video footage of the birds to help develop a conservation plan for the species and its habitat.


Dr Robert Prys-Jones, head of birds at the Natural History Museum in London, advised the team. He said: "This is remarkable. They have found perhaps the last flock of surviving indigo-winged parrots, making it one of the greatest wildlife discoveries to date. We were concerned that this spectacular parrot was lost for ever."

The same year perhaps the strangest ever species of parrot was discovered. To the astonishment of ornithologists it is bald. The discovery of the Bald parrot, or Pagagio careco, as it is known, since its home is in the Portuguese speaking Mato Grosso region of Brazil, has sent a flurry of excitement around the bird world. So far only one has been seen, but it has been photographed for a Brazilian bird magazine, and filmed by the local television network. It is so distinctive because of the lack of feathers on its head that experts have no doubt it is a previously unknown parrot.

In the same way that a vulture which ate carrion had developed baldness to keep its head from getting too messy. The hunt is now on for more members of the same species.

THE WOODBURY MACAWS

But one does not have to travel to the ends of the earth to search for mystery parrots. has confirmed that there is now a population of several thousand wild ring necked parakeets – a denizen of tropical Africa – living in and about London. A flock estimated at about 850 are living near Heathrow Airport, and smaller numbers of two other tropical species – Alexandrine and Monk parakeets – are also living in the south of England albeit in smaller numbers.

Indeed the African ring necked parakeet has now been reported from most counties in England and Wales and has even been described by irate Kentish fruit farmers as a pest on a par with the native bullfinch because of its fondness not only for fruit but for the flower buds of fruit trees.

Apart from the vociferous fruit farming lobby, most people seem quite happy to have these beautiful additions to the British avifauna. Indeed, thirty years ago, one member of the parrot family – the ubiquitous Budgerigar even got the seal of Royal Approval when the Queen Mother, no less, suggested to the Lord Lieutenant of the Scilly Isles that he introduce a flock of free flying budgies to the estates on the island of Tresco. Four pairs from the royal aviaries at Windsor Park were introduced to a specially built aviary and within six years there were over a hundred of these charming Australian grass parakeets living wild in the Scilly Islands. Although there was no evidence that they ever bred away from Tresco, they were seen on many of the neighbouring islands foraging for food.

For several years a pair of cockatiels, another Australiasian species kept commonly as a pet lived quite successfully in Powderham woods in south Devon, and during the winter of 1998, an example of an even more exotic species – the black headed parrot from South America – was reported at a bird sanctuary at Dawlish Warren (another site only a few miles from my front doorstep).

The British List – the bible for all UK ornithologists – records another thirteen species of parrot as escapees that have lived wild for a time in the UK, and whilst it is certain that most of these birds reached an unfortunate end, either because of the rigours of the British climate, or more prosaically because only single specimens escaped and so were not able to establish breeding colonies, it also seems likely that when you factor in the burgeoning trade in exotic pets and the advent of global warming, that more of these beautiful birds may yet become established here.

The quest for unknown parrots is a rewarding one, and we would be the first to admit that we have only just scratched the surface in this article. There are several more species thought to be extinct which may well have survived, other species - even macaws - rumoured to be living wild in the British countryside, and no doubt there are more totally unknown species awaiting discovery. So whether on holiday in an exotic location, or even wandering around British woodlands, the keen parrot fancier with a fancy for the cryptozoological could do worse than follow the advice given on a well known TV science fiction series. Keep watching the skies..you never know what you will see!