page_title: Mauritius blue pigeon
section_title: Extinction
hierarchical_section_title: Mauritius blue pigeon / Extinction
caption_attribution_description: Mauritius Blue Pigeon from François Levaillant (1753–1824) Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux d'Afrique.
context_page_description: The Mauritius blue pigeon is an extinct species of blue pigeon formerly endemic to the Mascarene island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. It has two extinct relatives from the Mascarenes and three extant ones from other islands. It is the type species of the genus of blue pigeons, Alectroenas.
  It had white hackles around the head, neck and breast and blue plumage on the body, and it was red on the tail and the bare parts of the head. These colours were thought similar to those of the Dutch flag, a resemblance reflected in some of the bird's names. The males had red foreheads, and the juveniles may have been partially green. It was 30 cm long and larger and more robust than any other blue pigeon species. It could raise its hackles into a ruff, which it used for display. Its call sounded like "barf barf" and it also made a cooing noise. It fed on fruits, nuts, and molluscs, and was once widespread in the forests of Mauritius.
  The bird was first mentioned in the 17th century and was described several times thereafter, but very few accounts describe the behaviour of living specimens.
context_section_description: The Mauritius blue pigeon coexisted with humans for 200 years. Its decline can be correlated with deforestation, which is also the main threat to extant blue pigeons. Little lowland forest was left on the island by 1859. Frugivorous birds often need a large area for foraging and move between forest types to feed on different types of food, which grow irregularly. Other blue pigeons perch on bare branches, making them vulnerable to hunters.
  Cossigny noted that the bird had become rare by 1755, but were common 23 years before, and attributed the decline to deforestation and hunting by escaped slaves. On the other hand, the French naturalist Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre stated they were still common in 1790. The Mauritius blue pigeon was not seasonally poisonous like the pink pigeon, which still survives on Mauritius today, but it was reputed to be. In spite of this, it was hunted for food, and some early accounts praised the flavour of the bird. Extant blue pigeons are also considered good food, and are heavily hunted as a result, and it appears another population of them was hunted to extinction from the Farquhar and Providence islands. The Mauritius blue pigeon was easy to catch due to island tameness.
   
  The last confirmed specimen was shot in the Savanne district in 1826, but the 1832 report by Desjardins suggests that some could still be found in remote forests in the centre of the island. Convinced that the pigeon still survived, the British ornithologist Edward Newton interviewed two inhabitants of Mauritius about the Mauritius blue pigeon in 1863, and these accounts suggest that the bird survived until at least 1837. The first interviewee claimed he had killed two specimens when the British Colonel James Simpson stayed on the island, which was 1826–37. The second was a woman who had last seen a bird around this time, and recalled hunts of it in approximately 1815, in a swampy area near Black River Gorges, south western Mauritius:
   When she was a girl and used to go into the forest with her father de Chazal, she has seen quantities of Pigeon Hollandais and Merles [Hypsipetes olivaceus], both species were so tame they might be knocked down with sticks, & her father used to kill more that way than by shooting them, as she was a nervous child. Her father always warned her before he fired, but she would entreat him to knock the bird down with his stick & not to shoot it – she said the last Pigeon Hollandais she saw was about 27 years ago just after she married poor old Moon, it was brought out of the forest by a marron. She said it was larger than a tame pigeon & was all the colours of the rainbow, particularly about the head, red, green & blue. 
  It can be concluded that the Mauritius blue pigeon became extinct in the 1830s. Apart from habitat destruction and hunting, introduced predators, mainly crab-eating macaques, were probably also responsible.
caption: 1808 illustration by J. Reinold
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