144
NOTORNIS ALBA(WHITE).
(Plate 33.)
- ? White gallinule Callam, Voy. Botany Bay (1783?) (teste Gray).
- Fulica alba White, Journ. Voy. N.S.W., p. 238 and plate (1790).
- Gallinula alba Latham, Ind. Orn. I, p. 768 (1790).
- Porphyrio albus Temminck, Man. d'Orn. II, p. 701 (1820).
- Porphyrio melanotus var. alba Gray, Voy. Ereb. and Terror, Birds, p. 19 (1844).
- Porphyrio melanotus Gray, Voy. Ereb. and Terror, Ed. II (1846), p. 14.
- Notornis ? alba Pelzeln, Sitz. k. Akad. Wiss. Wien. XLI, p. 328 (1860).
- Notornis alba Salvin, Ibis 1873, p. 295, pl. X.
There has been considerable confusion in connection with this bird and the following species, owing to the fact of White not having given any locality for the specimen on which Latham founded his Gallinula alba, and which is now in the Vienna Museum. That the Vienna specimen is really White's bird is proved because it was bought at the sale of the Leverian Museum, and White expressly states that all his birds were deposited in the Leverian Museum.
It is quite impossible to say with certainty which of the two forms, Notornis alba or N. stanleyi, came from Norfolk Island, as we have no indication of the origin of the Liverpool specimen. But seeing that in the anonymous work, "The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay," the first mentioned habitat is Lord Howe Island, and the figure shows a bird with the shorter wing-coverts of N. stanleyi, I think I am justified in taking the bird with longer wing-coverts—viz., Notornis alba, to be the bird from Norfolk Island.
White's description is as follows:—"White Fulica, with bill and front red, shoulders spined, legs and feet yellow." White's figure clearly shows the long wing coverts characteristic of the genus Notornis. Von Pelzeln says in his account of this bird that there is a label on it bearing the number 102, and giving as place of origin Norfolk Island, but White makes no mention of this. There are traces of a bluish shade, and two or three dark spots on the plumage, which has led many ornithologists to consider N. alba an albino. Gray, in "A List of Birds from New Zealand, &c.,"[1] remarked that some Norfolk Island specimens had blue between the shoulders, and the back spotted with the same colour. He also states that the young are said to be black, then become bluish grey, and afterwards pure white. From these and other authors' similar remarks I believe we have not here a case of albinism, but a bird which was in a stage of evolution towards becoming a fixed white species. Wing 9 inches (measured by myself in the Vienna Museum).
Habitat: Norfolk Island.
- ↑ Ibis 1862, p. 214.
