Reunion ibis

Threskiornis solitarius

   Threskiornis solitarius or The Réunion ibis is an extinct species of ibis that is native to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

## Behavior and ecology

As contemporaries' reports on whether the bird could fly or not remain contradictory, Moorer-Chauvier suggested that this ability depended on seasonal cycles involving the accumulation of fat during the rainy season and the refusal to eat during drought. Presumably, the bird could not fly because of the accumulated fat, but during a drought this ability returned. However, Dubois, in particular, wrote that the dodo, unlike many other Reunion birds, did not accumulate fat. The only mention of nutrition and the exact habitat is a report by Jean Feuil. 1708, which was the last evidence of a living individual:

"The solitaires are the size of an average turkey cock, grey and white in colour. They inhabit the tops of mountains. Their food is only worms and filth, taken on or in the soil." - A. S. Hume referring to the reunion ibis

The diet and diet described by Feuy coincided with that of the ibis, whereas the dodos were known to eat fruit Dubois classified this species as a land bird because it did not live in the natural habitat of ibises, such as a swamp. This was probably due to the fact that the ancestors of birds colonized Réunion to swamps, adapting to the available habitat. Mauritius was not colonized by birds for the reason that the red Mauritian shepherdesses occupied the same niche as the ibis. Apparently, the bird lived on hills with a limited range Reports from the first settlers indicated that the species had been discovered near its nesting colonies by 1667, but in hard-to-reach places. The bird could live in the eastern lowlands until the 1670s. Although many reports from the late seventeenth century said that the bird had a good taste, Feuyu did not like it. This may have been due to a change in the bird's diet as it moved to more inaccessible, high-altitude places, hiding from pigs destroying its nests, which were built on the ground due to limited flight capabilities

Many endemics of Reunion became extinct after the arrival of man, who destroyed the ecosystem of the island. The Réunion ibis lived side by side with such extinct birds as the Mascarene crested starling, the Mascarene parrot, the subspecies of the Mauritian ringed parrot, the Reunion Sultanka *Mascarenotus grucheti*, Du Bois's kwakwa and Reunion pink pigeon.

## Extinction

As Réunion became more and more populated by settlers, the Réunion ibis was forced to retreat to the mountain peaks. Introduced predators such as cats and rats claimed many victims. Uncontrolled hunting also contributed, and several contemporary accounts testify that the bird was widely killed for its meat.  In 1625, John Tatton described the bird's trustworthiness and how easy it was to hunt, as well as the large crowd it decimated:

> "There are a large number of land birds, both large and small, many pigeons, large parrots and the like; moreover, there is a large white bird the size of a turkey, very fat and with wings so short that they prevent it from flying; he seems almost trusting, like all other birds, as he has never been disturbed or startled by a shot. Our men beat them down with sticks and stones. Ten men were able to feed forty men in a single day. "
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In 1671, the chronicler Jean-Jacques Melet described the slaughter of some bird species on the island and mentioned the culinary qualities of this species:

> "There are birds in such large numbers and so trusting that it is not necessary to hunt with firearms, as they can easily be knocked down with a small stick or rod. During those five or six days when we were allowed to go into the forest, so many were killed that our General was forced to forbid anyone to walk over a hundred steps out of the camp, fearing that the entire neighborhood would be destroyed. Because it was enough to simply catch a live bird and make it scream to attract in a moment whole flocks sitting on the men present, so that one could often kill hundreds without moving from the square. But since it would have been impossible to wipe out such a large quantity, permission to kill was again granted, which was a cause for great joy for everyone, because there was very good food without effort."
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The last reliable mention of the hermit of Réunion was that of Feuilley in 1708, suggesting that the species was probably extinct sometime in the early 18th century.  In the 1820s, the French navigator Louis de Freycinet asked an old slave about drontes (Old Netherlandish word for dodo), and he was told that the bird existed around Saint-Joseph when his father was still a child. This would probably have been a century earlier, but this representation can also be unreliable. Cheke and Hume suspect that feral cats first hunted wild animals in the lowlands and later invaded higher inland areas, which were probably the last retreats of the Réunion bite, where it was inaccessible to pigs. It is believed that the species became extinct between 1710 and 1715.