When Lord Howe was discovered, there were sixteen land bird species breeding on the Island and early sailors, naturalists and painters documented these. Nine disappeared from one impact or another following the arrival of humans. The biggest disaster followed the accidental introduction of rats in 1918. The rats quickly multiplied and devastated the flora and fauna; owls introduced in the 1920’s to eat the rats also negatively impacted the birdlife.
In 1915, collector Roy Bell, came to the Island, and collected bird skins to send to England where book publisher, Gregory Matthews, had lined up artists to draw all of the Island birds and publish these in a book. It was rather fortunate that Bell came when he did, just four years before the arrival of rats off the cargo ship Makambo. Later, in 1934, eminent ornithologist, Keith Hindwood, recorded that five bird species were no longer on the Island.
Artists had painted the birds from the skins Bell had sent to the UK but, for several reasons, the book was not published until 1928. One of the birds in Matthew’s book – The Birds of Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands – was the Lord Howe fantail, Rhipidura cervana, a subspecies a bit different from those fantails found in Eastern Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. Reproduced here is a copy of the painting from Matthews’ Birds of Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands (held at the LHI Museum).
In 2019, a Grey fantail from mainland Australia turned up, and was sighted in Stevens Reserve for some weeks, before being found dead. On May 2nd, 2023, Lisa Makita reported that one had flown into her yard where she and Rod both got a good look at it. On May 14th, Island resident, Leon Brice, reported he had seen two fantails on the Boat Harbour track, flitting from one tree to another in front of him. Leon got a photo, not very good, but enough to confirm that these birds were fantails. Two weeks later, a tourist reported one in Stevens Reserve, so I went in to investigate. Over a period of a few days, I found not one but two fantails in the forest there. They were still on the Island as of 6th June.
Lois Whistler, the Islands’ oldest resident, has one regularly visit her backyard: “It’s a dear little thing and likes to hang around with the silver eyes” she said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it stayed here”, said Lois.
Norfolk Island has a very closely related subspecies to the lost Lord Howe Island one; and it has been talked about, for some years now, that once the rats and introduced owls were removed, there would be the possibility of bringing some of the Norfolk Island birds back to Lord Howe to replace those we have lost. Owing to the fact that both were a very similar subspecies, and both lived on islands, they probably share the same food and behaviour.
However, with these recent sightings of fantails that have turned up on the Island on their own since rats and owls have been removed, it will be interesting to see if they establish a new breeding population without our help.
Description
The extinct Lord Howe Island Grey Fantail was a small (length: about 15 cm) grey insectivorous bird with pale creamy-yellow underparts and a long dark-grey tail. Its head, neck and upperbody were grey, with a pale creamy-yellow eye-brow, the underparts were pale creamy-yellow, with the throat being slightly paler than the rest of the underparts, the tail was dark brownish-grey with a white tip and, though the tail was long, it was proportionally smaller than the tails of other subspecies in Australia. The wings were grey-brown with two prominent pale wing-bars. The bill was black, the eyes black-brown and the legs and feet were grey-black. The Lord Howe fantail has sometimes been treated as a full species. It differed from the other subspecies by its entire underparts being light cinnamon-brown, with a paler throat, lacking the white throat with the dark bar delimiting it from the breast.
Global Distribution
The Lord Howe Island Grey Fantail was endemic to Lord Howe Island. Other subspecies are widespread in Australia and New Zealand, as well as associated outlying islands, such as Norfolk Island, and the Chatham and Snares Island Groups of New Zealand. The species also occurs on islands in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in the south-western Pacific Ocean.
This article appeared in The Lord Howe Island Signal, 30 June 2023.
