Lord Howe gerygone
species of bird
The Lord Howe gerygone or Lord Howe gerygone flyeater (Gerygone insularis) is an extinct small bird in the family Acanthizidae, brown and greyish in color. Its head was brown apart from a pale grey eye-ring and a grey throat and chin, many parts of the animal varied to the colour of yellow, this being apparent in its bright yellow belly. It made its home in the canopies of the island's forest until the early 20th century. The bird has had a variety of monikers: locally, it was known as the "rain-bird" due to its activity after the rains, or the "pop-goes-the-weasel", due to the similarity of its song to the well-known tune. The bird was endemic to Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea (part of New South Wales, Australia). There have been no records of the species since 1928, and it is considered to be extinct. Its extinction is almost certainly due to predation by black rats which were accidentally introduced to the island in 1918 following the shipwreck of the SS Makambo there.
Taxonomy
There is much conflict in scientific literature regarding the exact taxonomic divisions of the gerygone species in the area. Gerygone insularis was previously referred to as Pseudogerygone insularis. There is also a significant mention of a second species, Gerygone thorpe, but, other than a smaller size there is not apparent evidence that this was a separate species.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q674329. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1928 and 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lord Howe gerygone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.