Robust White-eye
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| Robust White-eye | ||||||||||||||
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| Zosterops strenuus Gould, 1855 |
The Robust White-eye (Zosterops strenuus), also known as the Lord Howe White-eye or Robust Silvereye, was a species of bird in the Zosteropidae family. It was endemic to the lowland forests of Lord Howe Island, east of Australia.
It was a mainly green bird, around 7.6cm long, with a white belly and yellow throat, which separated it from other species of white-eye.
The Robust White-eye built loosely-constructed, cup-shaped nests out of palm fibre and dried grasses, which were sometimes found in shrubs overgrown with vines. Sadly this made the species vulnerable to predation from the Black Rat (Rattus rattus), which was introduced by man in 1918. Although once common, the bird was extinct by 1923.
Despite its small size, the bird was known to islanders as 'Big Grinnell', to differentiate it from the much smaller but related 'Little Grinnell', or Lord Howe Island Silvereye Zosterops lateralis tephropleurus, a subspecies of the Grey-breasted Silvereye. This subspecies hangs on, but is threatened with extinction.
[edit] Source
- Day, David (1981), The Encyclopedia of Vanished Species, London, Universal Books Ltd, pp109-110, ISBN 0-947889-30-2
- BirdLife International 2004. Zosterops strenuus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 27 July 2007.
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