MYSTERY OF THE PARROT IN THE PAINTING

The still-unidentified red parrot depicted in a previously-unknown painting by George Edwards (Errol Fuller)


I am greatly indebted to acclaimed ornithological author and painter Errol Fuller for kindly bringing the following case to my attention, which had never previously been documented until he kindly permitted me to do so in my book Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999).

The modern-day history of George Edwards's red mystery parrot from Jamaica began in June 1996, when Errol attended the annual Olympia Antiques Fair in London. While walking round, he noticed on the stall of one dealer a picture that he knew at once to be the work of English bird painter George Edwards (1694-1773). Popularly dubbed the father of British Ornithology, Edwards was the author and illustrator of A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743-51) and Gleanings of Natural History (1758-64).

George Edwards

Yet although he was very familiar with all of the paintings in both of these books, Errol did not recognise this particular example on the dealer's stall, and suspected that it was an unpublished, unknown work of Edwards. Greatly intrigued, Errol purchased the painting, and after researching it thoroughly he was able to confirm that it was indeed unknown.

Errol has very generously granted me permission to reproduce this painting in my publications (its appearance in Mysteries of Planet Earth was the first time that it had ever appeared in print), so it now appears as the opening illustration in this present ShukerNature blog post. As can be seen, the painting depicts a predominantly red, vaguely amazon-like parrot - which only serves to deepen further the mystery encompassing this picture. For there is no known species of parrot anywhere in the world that corresponds with this specimen. So what could it be, and where did it come from?

The painting bears an inscription at the bottom:

"A very uncommon parrot from Jamaica. Drawn from Nature of the size of life [i.e. life size] by G. Edwards. July 1764".

A more detailed one, clearly penned by Edwards himself, is written on the painting's reverse:

"The insides of the wings and the underside of the tail is of a Durlis [darkest?] yellow, the colours of the upper sides casting faintly through them.

"This bird was lent to me by Dr. Alexander Russell and is Preserved in his collection. It was shot in Jamaica and brought dryed [sic] to England. The people in Jamaica did not remember Ever to have seen one of this species of Parrots before.

"Geo. Edwards, July, 1764

"Some of the feathers have their tipps [sic] red and others have them yellow. The feathers on the undersides, Back and rump have yellow with fine transverse lines of red."

Dr Alexander Russell (1715-1768) was a renowned British naturalist and Fellow of the Royal Society. If only his collection of zoological specimens containing this seemingly unique bird still existed, it may be possible to investigate its taxonomic identity further, perhaps even via modern techniques involving DNA comparison. However, neither Errol nor I have uncovered any record as to the collection's fate. Indeed, 200+ years ago the taxiderm techniques available were such that few specimens survived for any length of time in a satisfactory condition. Quite probably, therefore, the mystery red parrot of Jamaica degraded into a pile of dust and decomposed feathers long ago.

On account of its singularity, and unfamiliarity even to the Jamaican natives, this individual may well have been a mutant specimen of some known species - perhaps an erythristic (aberrantly red) mutant of one of the smaller species of West Indian amazon parrot? - rather than a distinct species in its own right. One such species, the yellow-billed amazon Amazona collaria, is native to Jamaica. So too is the black-billed amazon A. agilis, which at just 10 in long is the smallest known species of amazon parrot.

Yellow-billed amazon parrot (Wayne Sutherland/Wikipedia)

In the painting, which is life size, it is 9 in long, as measured in a straight line from the top of its head to the tip of its tail. Alternatively, it may not have been native to Jamaica, but might conceivably have been brought here from elsewhere. Yet even if so, its taxonomic identity remains unsolved.

As for the origin of the painting itself, all that the dealer could tell Errol was that it had been in a portfolio of 18th and 19th Century watercolour paintings purchased by him at a country house sale, and was the best picture in the portfolio. Judging from its date, 1764, this painting may have been prepared by Edwards for inclusion in his Gleanings but was ultimately omitted, or it may have been prepared for a new book that he never completed.

And here is where, at least for the present time, this double mystery - of the painting, and of the parrot depicted in it - stands. If anyone can shed any light regarding either of them, including sharing any information regarding Dr Alexander Russell's collection, Errol and I would be very interested to receive details.

This ShukerNature blog post is an adapted excerpt from my book Mysteries of Planet Earth: An Encyclopedia of the Inexplicable (Carlton: London, 1999).

Black-billed amazon parrot (Brennan Mulrooney/Wikipedia)

THE PINK-TUSKED BLACK ELEPHANT - A FORGOTTEN CHINESE PUZZLE

My painted wooden figurine of a black Asian elephant, with pink-suffused tusks supplied by computer magic! (Dr Karl Shuker)


In his book The Vermilion Bird (1967), concerning life in T'ang Dynasty China (618-907 AD), Edward H. Schafer referred to a highly distinctive type of elephant:

"One T'ang source [namely, Ch'ing I Lu, by T'ao Ku] tells of a race of black elephants with small pink tusks in Hsun and Lei [corresponding to the Leizhou Peninsula and southeastern Guangxi Province]. Perhaps this describes the true Chinese race itself, whose furious representatives had been subdued by the agents of the kings of Shang [the Chinese dynasty spanning c.16th-11th Century BC]...The naturally pink ivory of the local elephants was well favoured, indeed as equal to the ivory imported from overseas."

Yet as such creatures certainly do not exist today, one might be forgiven for assuming that they owe more to local legend than zoological reality - which is why it came as such a surprise to discover that this elephantine enigma has actually been assigned its own official scientific name.

In his volume Some Extinct Elephants (1955), Sri Lankan zoologist Dr P.E.P. Deraniyagala formally classified it as a discrete subspecies of the Asian elephant, dubbing it Elephas maximus rubridens ('pink-tusked'). Formerly native to eastern China as far north as the Yellow River, this elephant's attractively-tinted tusks proved so sought-after that it had been hunted into extinction by c.1500 BC. Elephants do still exist elsewhere in China, but these belong to the Asian elephant's Indian subspecies.

Black elephants were often illustrated by Mughal artists in India, such as this 17th-Century example, depicting black elephants from the stable of a Mughal ruler, but their tusks were white, not pink

Yet as there are no pink-tusked black Chinese elephants in existence any more, what did Deraniyagala use as his type specimen, upon which to base his formal description of this long-vanished subspecies? Remarkably, he selected for that purpose an antique Chinese bronze statuette - or, to be precise, an illustration of this statuette - present within the collections of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. The illustration had been published in 1925 by Berthold Laufer, Curator of Anthropology at the museum, within one of the museum's own publications, a 78-page anthropology leaflet (#21) entitled Ivory in China.

Illustration of a Chinese bronze elephant statuette from Laufer's leaflet

Today, conversely, the name Elephas maximus rubridens is generally listed merely as a synonym of Elephas maximus indicus, the Indian elephant. So except for the museum's statuette, it is as if the pink-tusked pachyderms with ebony hides never existed – unless somewhere, hidden away amid the vast collections of some museum or even as artefacts in some personal collection, there may still be a few surviving tusks or skins from this most unusual of elephants!

Many thanks to cryptozoological researcher Richard Muirhead and veteran chronicler of Sinian forteana Steve Moore for providing me with details regarding this previously-obscure, long-lost, creature.

Some very dark (painted?) elephants at a mosque in the centre of a Mughal fort in Rajasthan (www.rajasthan-tour-travel.net)

LEGUATIA GIGANTEA - THE GIANT BIRD THAT NEVER WAS?

Leguatia gigantea, as painted by Frederick W. Frohawk in 1905 for Lord Walter Rothschild's book Extinct Birds (1907)


For many years, there was much debate within geographical and zoological circles concerning whether the famous Indian Ocean voyage of Huguenot refugee François Leguat during 1690-1698 did actually take place - and, indeed, whether Leguat himself ever existed. Some researchers claimed that Leguat and his travelogue Voyage et Avantures de François Leguat et de Ses Compagnons en Deux Isles Désertes des Indes Orientales (1708), translated into English as New Voyage to the East Indies, were as fraudulent as those of Baron Münchausen and the fictitious Sir John Mandeville, and that his visits to the Mascarene islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues occurred only in someone's imagination.

In 1926, however, two Paris librarians, J. Vivielle and Henri Dehérain, uncovered much new data substantiating the reality of Leguat and his voyage. Nevertheless, considerable controversy still surrounds this enigmatic explorer (now known to have been born in 1637-1639 and to have died in September 1735), not least of which concerns the identity of a very tall, long-vanished, and extremely mysterious Mauritius bird named after him.

Referred to by Leguat as 'Le Géant' ('the giant'), Leguatia gigantea was so christened by German zoologist Prof. Hermann Schlegel in 1858, and is usually deemed to have been a giant species of rail. A marsh-dweller, it was reputedly abundant at the time of Leguat's visit to Mauritius (and he also spied it on the smaller Mascarene island of Rodrigues), but had entirely vanished shortly afterwards, judging from the fact that no other explorer has reported seeing it since. Having said that, the Marquis du Quesne, a contemporary of Leguat, did briefly refer in one of his own publications to a giant marsh-bird formerly inhabiting the Mascarene island of Réunion (then called Bourbon) that may have been Leguatia.

Two engravings are known (which have inspired a number of much more recent paintings). One, entitled 'Le Géant', is by Leguat himself and appeared in his travelogue.

Leguat's own depiction of what he termed 'Le Géant'

However, this illustration seems to have been based upon an earlier engraving - of a bird simply dubbed 'Avis Indica', which featured in an early 17th-Century tome of illustrations by Adriaan Collaert, entitled Avium Vivae Icones. Both engravings depict a long-necked, squat-bodied, long-limbed bird with enormous toes, a short white-edged tail, small wings, and a fairly long, straight, pointed beak.

The enigmatic 'Avis Indica'

Leguat, meanwhile, described 'Le Géant' (i.e. Leguatia) as follows:

"...and many of these birds called giants, because they are six feet high. They are extremely high mounted, and have very long necks. Their bodies are not bigger than that of a goose. They are all white, except a little place under their wings, which is reddish. They have a goose's bill, only a little sharper; their claws are very long and divided."

And this is Prof. Schlegel's own account of its morphology in his formal description of Leguatia gigantea:

"Stature, six feet high. Body not heavier than that of a Goose. Wings pretty short, but fit for flight. Feathers of the tibia reaching pretty close to the tarsus. Toes long and quite free, those in front about as long as the tarsus. Upper mandible extended in a plate reaching beyond the eye. General colour white, with a reddish spot under the wing. Colour of the feet and bill unknown, but probably not very remarkable, as the description does not mention it."

As can be readily perceived, Schlegel had incorporated into his own description various features not included in Leguat's written description but which had appeared in his engraving (despite the worrying fact that the latter seemed to be little more than a version of the obscure 'Avis Indica' engraving, and was therefore hardly the most reliable image to use as the basis for describing Leguatia). Moreover, in the belief that Leguatia was a giant species of gallinule (the taxonomic group of rails containing moorhens, coots, swamphens, and the takahe), Schlegel produced a modified version of Leguat's engraving in which Leguatia had been duly transformed into a giant gallinule, and published it alongside Leguat's original for comparison purposes.

Leguat's engraving (left) alongside Schlegel's giant gallinule equivalent

Ingenious and intriguing though it may have been, how justified, scientifically speaking, Schlegel's visual interpretation could be (based as it was upon an engraving that was itself derived from a very ambiguous original) is another matter entirely!

Modern-day representations of Leguatia have suffered from varying degrees of extrapolation and elaboration too. When documenting this mysterious bird in his book Extinct Birds (1907), Lord Walter Rothschild described it as follows:

"Body no larger than that of a goose; wings rather short but still fitted for flight; feathers of the legs reaching down almost to the top of the tarso-metatarsus; toes long and completely free, middle toe almost as long as tarso-metatarsus. Bill with a naked shield reaching back beyond the eye. Height about 6 feet."

Rothschild's description is simply a slightly paraphrased version of Schlegel's. Consequently, when acclaimed bird artist Frederick W. Frohawk was painting Leguatia in 1905 for inclusion within Rothschild's Extinct Birds two years later - see the painting heading this present ShukerNature blog post – he was evidently inspired by Schlegel's reconstruction of Leguatia as a giant gallinule, because he drew its beak and feet like those of a gigantic moorhen. Frohawk also gave Leguatia's beak the red colour associated with the common European moorhen's, because no beak colour had been stated by Leguat. No leg or foot colour had been stated by him either, so for reasons that remain unclear, Frohawk painted these red too (rather than the less striking yellow shade of the moorhen's).

The European moorhen Gallinula chloropus (J.M. Garg-Wikipedia)

Equally perplexing is why Frohawk added black wing-tips to his illustration of Leguatia, because neither Leguat's description nor his engraving contained any suggestion of such a feature. This seemingly invented characteristic was also incorporated into the specially-commissioned illustration of Leguatia that appeared in Masauji Hachisuka's book The Dodo and Kindred Birds, or the Extinct Birds of the Mascarene Islands (1953), for which Hachisuka duly apologised in a footnote.

Moreover, it is also unclear why a number of modern-day works documenting Leguatia refer to it as being flightless, because Leguat's account contains no such statement. Only the very short wings of the bird in his engraving indicate the possibility of such a condition. However, as already emphasised, this is far from being a reliable image. Worth noting is that Schlegel stated in his formal description of Leguatia that he considered its wings "fit for flight" - a statement reiterated ("fitted for flight") by Rothschild in his own description.

A little-known depiction of Leguatia features on Card #3 of Series 2 in the two-series set of chromo-lithographic cards entitled Tiere der Urwelt ('Creatures of the Primitive World'), which were issued by the Reichardt Cacao Company in Germany during the first decade of the 20th Century. These cards were illustrated by an artist named Francis John, and for the most part depicted prehistoric creatures, plus some historically-extinct forms. As can be seen here, John's illustration of Leguatia was clearly influenced by Leguat's engraving.

Leguatia, as portrayed by Francis John on a chromo-lithographic card from the early 1900s

Incidentally, Leguatia gigantea, or Leguat's giant rail (to give it its rarely-used common name), should not be confused – though it often is – with Leguat's rail Erythromachus (=Aphanapteryx) leguati. This was a much smaller, chicken-sized species of rail native to Rodrigues. First described by Leguat, it became extinct during the mid-1700s.

Leguat's rail, illustrated by Frederick W. Frohawk for Lord Rothschild's Extinct Birds (1907)

Its closest relative was another now-demised Mascarene species, the similar-sized Mauritius red rail Aphanapteryx bonasia, which is believed to have died out around 1700.

Mauritius red rail portrayed on a Mauritius postage stamp from 1965 in the author's collection (Dr Karl Shuker)

As for Leguatia: Faced with such a highly distinctive bird, yet one that bore no convincing resemblance to any known species, three schools of ornithological opinion ultimately arose.

One claimed that Leguatia was indeed an unknown species, most probably a gigantic gallinule (and therefore a member of the rail family, Rallidae), which had tragically died out long ago. Supporters of this possibility included Lord Rothschild and Masauji Hachisuka.

A second proposed that Leguat was mistaken over what he saw and that the two engravings were simply ill-drawn, inaccurate representations of some familiar species, of which the two most favoured contenders are a gallinule or a flamingo (most probably the greater flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus, bones of which have been found on Mauritius). This theory was supported by 19th-Century ornithologist Alfred Newton, Paul Carié (in his 1930 paper investigating Leguatia), and Anthony S. Cheke and Julian P. Hume (authors of Lost Land of the Dodo (2008), among others.

And the third brusquely dismissed Leguatia (like its human namesake) as wholly fictitious – an invented, "dreamed-up" bird, to quote German ornithologist Dr Kálmán Lambrecht, writing about it in 1933. James C. Greenway Jr (author of Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, 1967) also favoured this explanation.

Comparing Leguatia gigantea with the greater flamingo (flamingo photograph © Biodiversityexplorer.org)

Even today, these factions are no nearer reaching an agreement concerning the status and validity (or otherwise) of Leguatia. It certainly seems strange that none of the many explorers visiting Mauritius before or since Leguat has referred to Leguatia; surely it would be difficult to overlook or fail to mention such a sizeable, eyecatching bird. Yet perhaps at least two explorers did see it - after all, we still have Collaert's enigmatic 'Avis Indica' to explain, plus the Marquis du Quesne's mention of giant marsh-dwelling birds on Réunion.

As for misidentification based upon poor portrayals: flamingo bones have indeed been discovered on Mauritius, but if Collaert's 'Avis Indica' is truly meant to be a depiction of a flamingo, then it must surely rate as one of the worst, most outlandishly inaccurate animal illustrations of all time! Equally, it hardly need be stated that flamingos are not short-winged.

A major critic of the misidentified flamingo explanation for Leguatia was none other than Prof. Schlegel, who had formally described and christened it in 1858. In an English translation of that paper, published in 1866 by the ornithological journal The Ibis, Schlegel provided no less than eight separate refutations of the flamingo explanation, which can be summarised as follows:

1) The physiognomy of Leguatia is quite different from that of the flamingo.

2) Its beak as depicted and described by Leguat bears no resemblance to the flamingo's uniquely-shaped beak.

3) The flamingo's neck is much longer and thinner than Leguatia's

4) The flamingo's tail is much shorter, has a different shape, and is never carried erect.

5) The flamingo's legs are much longer than the flamingo and are for the greater part bare, whereas in Leguatia they are covered with feathers almost as far as the tarsus.

6) The flamingo has much shorter fore-toes, connected by webbing, and an extremely small hind toe, whereas in Leguatia the toes are extraordinarily long and not webbed.

7) The flamingo's plumage colour is grey in the young and more or less generally red in older specimens, but never white like Leguatia.

8) Leguat was familiar with the morphology of the flamingo, so surely he would not mistake some other, very different bird (i.e. Leguatia) for a flamingo.

Yet if we accept the validity of Leguatia as a discrete species in its own right, and that its morphology was accurately described and depicted in Leguat's text and the two engravings, why did what Leguat claimed to have been a common species die out so rapidly after his Mauritius visit? And why are there no specimens or preserved remains? Not a single bone referable to such a large, distinctive bird has ever been discovered among the countless subfossil remains retrieved from various sites on Mauritius.

Until answers to such questions as these are forthcoming, Leguatia seems fated to remain in this ornithological limbo of the lost occupied by it for the past three centuries.


POSTSCRIPT – AN INTRIGUING FIGURINE – 9 September 2012

Today, at a car boot sale in England, I purchased for just £1 this lovely wood-carved bird figurine, standing almost 1 ft tall and with the wood's natural imperfections and colour shadings left intact. It is clearly a rail of some kind, but it does not seem to correspond with any European or North American species, and as these types of carving tend to originate from Asia and Australasia, I am assuming therefore that the species of bird represented by it is a native of this region of the world, but can anyone identify it more precisely?

My mystery rail figurine (Dr Karl Shuker)

The colour print below of a Tasmanian native-hen or wood hen Tribonyx mortierii (a rail species, in spite of its name!) is very reminiscent of this figurine, which also reminds me somewhat of Leguatia gigantea, though the latter's neck was somewhat longer in the various depictions of it. All suggestions concerning my figurine's putative species are greatly welcomed as ever!

Hand-coloured lithograph, 1850, of a Tasmanian wood hen

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE WEREWOLF PAW...THAT WASN'T!

Ben Coult's mystifying preserved paw, palm surface uppermost (Ben Coult)


One thing about being a cryptozoologist is that I regularly receive the most unusual emails, and the following one was no exception! It was sent to me on 5 September 2012 by Ben Coult from County Durham in northern England:

"I have an interesting artefact that I found about 15 years ago and was wondering if you would be interested in me sending you through a few photos of it?

"Firstly let me assure you that I am fairly well versed in the subject, having read Heuvelmans and Sanderson for years, and was recently referred to your website by a friend. Also I have a solid upbringing in local natural history and many contacts in that field.

"I shall now elaborate, firstly I am from a small village in the north east of England in county Durham (an area not known for unusually large mammals), when I was about 16 myself and a friend were riding bikes through the village when I spotted something in the road which looked for all the world like a poorly stuffed hand. I jumped off the bike and retrieved it and it turned out to be just that. At the age of 16 the 'hand' was only marginally smaller than my own, it has a tough leathery pad on the palm and was obviously heavily haired on the back although (it is obviously quite old) the hair is now sparse. The hand has five 'fingers' each equipped with a 20 to 30 mm claw, these are heavy and curved and look similar to Sloth or Ratel claws.

"I have had numerous people look at it including a family friend who is the ex-taxidermist for the Hancock museum in Newcastle and no-one has been able to identify it yet apart from saying 'it could be' or 'it looks like'. Another strange twist to this is that the wrist of the hand has been twisted together and dried, this looks like it must have been done when the specimen was originally stuffed, and a purple ribbon was tied around the pinched in wrist.

"The hand has been sat on my bookcase for 15 years now although I still try and get people to identify it from time to time, hence this email. If you are interested please drop me an email and I will send through a couple of pictures."

Needless to say, I was extremely interested, as my curiosity had definitely been piqued by this singular incident. So I emailed Ben back straight away with a request to see his photos of the hand, and a few hours later I received five close-up pictures of it, reproduced here with Ben's kind permission.

Comparing the size of the paw with Ben's own hand (Ben Coult)

My first thought when I looked at them was 'badger', and when a few days later I posted on my Facebook Wall and on the pages of the various Facebook cryptozoology groups that I've founded the photograph that heads this present ShukerNature blog article, most of the FB friends commenting upon it shared my thought. Yet when I compared Ben's photos of his preserved paw specimen to photos of badger paws, the correspondence did not seem very close at all.

Badger paw, palm surface uppermost (http:// badgerwatcher.files.wordpress.com)

In particular, as can be seen here, the plantar (palm) pad of the badger was very different in form from that of this paw, and the digits of the badger paw seemed much shorter and broader than those of the latter. There was also the latter's distinctive mosaic-like skin patterning to explain.

Close-up of the mosaic-like tessellated patterning of the paw's skin (Ben Coult)

Also, if it were indeed nothing more unusual than a badger's paw, why hadn't the professional, highly-experienced taxidermist to whom Ben had shown it been able to identify it?

Perhaps, therefore, as Ben had speculated, it was indeed from something rather more exotic, but what?

Other suggestions posted to my FB pages included bear, monkey, sloth, mole, turtle, and (albeit decidedly tongue-in-cheek!) chupacabra and werewolf!

The claws of the paw are very pronounced (Ben Coult)

Someone who shares my own interest in unusual preserved animal specimens is Southampton University palaeontologist and Facebook friend Dr Darren Naish, so on 8 September I posted onto his FB Wall this same paw photograph and the background details concerning the paw, and waited for his opinion as to the likely identity of its original owner. When I received it later that evening, I was certainly surprised, because Darren suggested that it was the paw of a kangaroo!

When he followed up his pronouncement, however, by posting the following link to an online photograph of a kangaroo's paws:

http://3amkickoff.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/kangaroo-hands.jpg

there could be no doubt as to the accuracy of his identification, because as can be clearly observed below, the paws in this photo provided a perfect match with Ben's enigmatic specimen, right down to the mosaic skin patterning. Well done, Darren!

The photograph of a kangaroo's paws from the above link provided by Darren (3amkickoff.files.wordpress.com)

Fellow FB friend Markus Bühler also sent me some online photos of kangaroo paws, and I located some as well, thereby providing plenty of independent confirmation for this identity.

Judging from the paw's size, the precise species involved is most likely to be either the red kangaroo Macropus rufus (which is the world's largest living kangaroo species as well as the largest surviving marsupial of any species) or the great grey kangaroo M. giganteus (the second-largest kangaroo species alive today). Adult males of the red kangaroo stand up to 6.9 ft tall (up to 6.6 ft in the great grey) and weigh around 200 lb or more (around 145 lb in the great grey). Both species are extremely common and used in a wide range of commercial ventures.

Red kangaroo (Long Island Game Farm)

Nevertheless, one aspect of the mystery of Ben's preserved paw remained unresolved. Why had its wrist been constricted with a ligature of purple ribbon, and why was this paw lying discarded on the road?

Another Facebook friend, Martin Cotterill, has amassed a very impressive collection and knowledge of taxiderm specimens and other natural history exhibits, and he wondered whether the paw could have been derived from a kangaroo-paw backscratcher. I knew that macabre novelty items like this do indeed exist - some dating back to Victorian times and occasionally met with at antique fairs or in bric-a-brac shops, as well as modern-day ones still widely sold in Australian souvenir shops. A swift check online revealed photographs of several such objects, consisting of a genuine preserved kangaroo paw attached to a long pole. If the paw from one of these backscratchers were pulled off, it would then need to be tied tightly closed at its base, in order to prevent its stuffing from falling out. So that would explain the presence of the purple ribbon ligature around the wrist of Ben's specimen.

Novelty backscratcher incorporating a genuine preserved kangaroo paw (www.aussiefoodshop.com)

In short, Ben's mystery specimen was the paw from a kangaroo-paw backscratcher, which presumably had either been broken or been deliberately pulled apart in order to obtain the paw as a somewhat grotesque curiosity, which had subsequently been discarded, lying on the road until Ben had cycled by all those years ago and found it there. It also explains why even his knowledgeable taxidermist friend had not recognised what animal it had originated from, as I can't imagine that he'd seen too many demised kangaroos in County Durham!

Another mystery beast case solved, via the collective 'brain' of my Facebook friends network and myself, with particular thanks to Dr Darren Naish, Markus Bühler, and Martin Cotterill, but most of all of course to Ben Coult for so kindly bringing this highly intriguing case to my attention and permitting me to document it here.

Ben's preserved paw, dorsal surface (Ben Coult)

WHEN DID THE CAROLINA PARAKEET REALLY DIE OUT?

Carolina parakeets, eastern subspecies (John James Audubon)

The Carolina parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis, a readily recognizable species with bright green body in the nominate eastern subspecies C. c. carolinensis (bluish-green in the Louisiana subspecies C. c. ludovicianus) and striking yellow head was the only parrot species native to the eastern USA, and was also the only member of the parrot genus Conuropsis. Once very common in North America east of the Great Plains (especially in swampland areas), it acquired notoriety among fruit farmers as a considerable pest, because large flocks would descend upon orchards and devour great quantities of the farmers’ valuable produce. This, together with its popularity among woodsmen as a shooting target, and as a pet (responsible for the trapping of great numbers), resulted in its rapid extermination.

The last wild specimen of either subspecies known to have been collected was taken on 18 April 1901 in Florida, the Louisiana subspecies had died out by the early 1910s, and by February 1918 only a single captive specimen remained of the eastern subspecies - and, therefore, of the entire Carolina parakeet species. By an ironic coincidence, this last living individual, a male called ‘Incas’, was housed at Cincinnati Zoo — which had already been home to the last confirmed specimen of the passenger pigeon Ectopistes migratorius just four years earlier — where he died later that month. Thus, in less than four years, this same zoo had played host, reluctantly but impotently, to the extinction of two of North America’s most iconic species of bird.

Carolina parakeet, Louisiana subspecies (John James Audubon)

Yet as with the passenger pigeon, reports of Carolina parakeets continued to surface for many years after their species’ official extinction date. Some of these may well have been based upon sightings of non-native green parakeets that had escaped from captivity, but other, more compelling accounts are also on record.

For example, in Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (2nd edn, 1967) James C. Greenway noted that in 1920 a flock of about 30 individuals was reported near Florida’s Fort Drum Creek by Henry Redding, a local man. Equally remarkable (but in this case for all the wrong reasons) was a sighting made in 1926 by Charles E. Doe — at that time no less a personage than the Curator of Birds at Florida University. The presence in Okeechobee County, Florida, of three pairs of parakeets closely resembling the supposedly extinct Carolina parakeet evidently filled Doe with great excitement. So much so that, according to Errol Fuller (Extinct Birds, 1987), he proceeded to rob the poor birds of their eggs!

Taxiderm specimen of the eastern Carolina parakeet at Tring Museum, England (Dr Karl Shuker)

From carrying out extensive enquiries, esteemed American ornithologist Alexander Sprunt Jr became convinced that before the start of the Second World War in 1939, Carolina parakeets still survived within the Santee swamp area of South Carolina. One account that particularly impressed him had been obtained from a local woodsman named Shokes, who alleged that during the three to four years in which he and his son had been employed in that area as National Audubon Society bird wardens in the 1930s, they had seen green-bodied, yellow-headed parakeets there on three or four separate occasions. During one of these, Shokes had observed two such birds, evidently adults, followed by a smaller, younger individual with wavering flight, as they made their way across Wadmacaun Creek to Wadmacaun Island.

Sprunt himself, conversely, never saw adult specimens but one day sometime between 1936 and 1938, whilst in the company of John Baker (then President of the National Audubon Society) and acclaimed ornithologist/bird painter Roger Tory Peterson, he had seen a bright green bird fly swiftly past about 50 yards away, with a rapid, dove-like flight which convinced him that it was an immature Carolina parakeet. Sprunt sent news of his investigations to his English friend M.S. Curtler (Animals, 23 November 1965).

Rare photograph from 1906 of a living Carolina parakeet - Doodles, a pet owned by Paul Bartsch (public domain)

Sadly, even if the Santee Swamp birds were genuine Carolina parakeets, they could not have saved the species from extinction, because the swamp was eventually destroyed by developmental processes for a power plant. Nonetheless, there are many other swamps still existing within this bird’s original range that remain aloof and little-explored even today. In 1937, for instance, Oren Stemville shot a colour film of a bird in Georgia’s famous Okefenokee Swamp that resembled a Carolina parakeet.

Privately-owned taxiderm specimen of the eastern Carolina parakeet (Martin Cotterill)

So although unlikely, it is not impossible that some Carolina parakeets still linger undetected in such localities, with any occasional sightings of them being discounted as nothing more exciting than non-native escapee species.


This ShukerNature post is adapted from an excerpt in my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2007).

Eastern Carolina parakeet and assorted North American songbirds (Alexander Wilson)

LIONS AND SATYRS AND DRAGONS, OH MY! – CAR BOOT SALES AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY #2

My Persepolis stone relief replica (Dr Karl Shuker)


I am very fond of modern-day replicas of ancient artwork that are popularly sold as tourist souvenirs at the sites in question (tragically, the multi-million-pound price tags of the originals place them a little outside my available budget right now!), and over the years I've been fortunate enough to acquire several interesting, good-quality examples at various car boot sales and bric-a-brac fairs, and which relate in some manner or other to mystery animals.

My most recent addition, purchased for just 50p (!) at a car boot sale three weeks ago and illustrated at the beginning of this ShukerNature blog post, is a large stone replica of a lion-depicting relief that appears on the left-hand staircase of Darius the Great's Apadana Palace at Persepolis in what is now Iran, and dating from the 6th Century BC - as I and several Facebook friends collectively discovered during some recent FB-mediated detective work (special thanks to Mandy Holloway, Penny Odell, and Kirst d'Raven!).

Specifically, the carving depicts two Elam tribesmen bringing a couple of lions as tributes to King Darius, as lions were sacred animals in the religion of Zoroastrianism that prevailed at Persepolis.

My replica relief and, superimposed, a section of the original version at Persepolis (Dr Karl Shuker and Wikipedia)


Curiously, however, even though the adult lion is evidently a female (she has teats) and the lion being carried is obviously only a cub (as evidenced by its small size), both are portrayed with luxuriant manes. Could this simply a stylistic convention? Yet if so, why are there normal, maneless lionesses depicted on various other Assyrian reliefs, such as the Royal Lion Hunt series from the North Palace at Ninevah (645-635 BC), now held at the British Museum? Alternatively, freak lionesses with manes have occasionally been confirmed both in the wild and in captivity, so such a specimen would not be unknown, though the maned cub remains unexplained.

A few months earlier, and at a separate car boot sale, I invested £4 in the purchase of this very different but equally interesting lion-depicting replica. A paperweight, it consists of a hefty lump of solid rock, one face of which has been sliced across, upon which a lion in mosaic-style has then been carved, after which the face's surface has been carefully smoothed to yield a highly-polished finish.

My unidentified lion paperweight (Dr Karl Shuker)

Although I have definitely seen photos of lions portrayed in a similar (if not identical) style, which may have been of ancient Greek or Roman provenance, I have so far been unable to trace any of them, so at present the identity of the original artwork upon which this modern-day replica is based remains a mystery to me. Consequently, if anyone reading this ShukerNature blog post recognises it, I would greatly welcome any pertinent information.

The same applies to this modern replica of an ancient stone bust of a satyr, which I purchased for £5 from a charity shop in King's Heath, Birmingham, last year. There is a label underneath, written in Greek, which correctly identifies it as a satyr (those half-human, half-goat entities from classical Greek mythology that spent their days liberally imbibing wine and libidinously fraternising with nymphs), and gives the date of the original bust as c.400 BC, but I haven't been able to identify or locate the latter so far. Once again, therefore, any pointers would be very gratefully received!

My Greek satyr bust replica (Dr Karl Shuker)

Yet another unsourced modern-day replica acquired at a car boot sale is this small but attractive wooden tableau depicting St George dispatching his pesky dragon foe. It greatly resembles various early Turkish portrayals of this famous, much-represented scene, but as yet I haven't encountered an exact match for it. So any thoughts or suggestions would indeed be most welcome!

My replica of a early Turkish (?) portrait of St George and the Dragon (Dr Karl Shuker)

ATTACKED BY A BRITISH MYSTERY CAT! - A HITHERTO-UNDOCUMENTED ABC CASE.

AZ's sketch of the mystery cat assailant slain by their mother (Dr Karl Shuker)

Having been researching cryptozoology for almost 30 years, I have received countless communications from correspondents worldwide – far more than I have ever been able to incorporate into books and articles. Thanks to my ShukerNature blog, however, I now have an additional outlet that I can use to disseminate information received by me, including reports such as the following highly significant one, concerning a British mystery cat or ABC (Alien Big Cat). Received by me almost 20 years ago, but never before published, it greatly deserved to be quoted in full rather than merely summarised, yet it was far too lengthy for inclusion in traditional hard-copy articles or similar publications of mine. Now, at last, it can be made public, in its entirety. Due to its dramatic content, however, and the resulting possibility that the person who submitted this report will receive obtrusive media attention, despite their permitting me to release their name if I so choose and the considerable time that has elapsed since the reported incident occurred I have decided to withhold both their name and their specific location at the time of their writing to me, though I have retained these details on file. Instead, I shall simply refer to this person here as 'AZ' (not their real initials).

Just before Christmas 1992, I received a remarkable 4-page letter through the post, which had been passed on to me by Susan A. Wood, widow of Gerald L. Wood. The author of three comprehensive editions of The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats, Gerry had been a longstanding friend of mine, but, tragically, he had died more than a year before the letter had been sent. It had reached Susan on 14 December 1992, she had responded to it two days later, and had then posted it to me on 18 December in case it would be of interest to me – which it most certainly was!

The handwritten letter was from AZ, a member of the Romany community, and it told of an extraordinary, and very frightening, encounter with a large mystery cat in the Cheviots on the English-Scottish border during summer 1987. Here are scans of AZ's entire communication to Gerry, with only the name and address of AZ and those of various family members and friends of AZ blacked out:




AZ's 4-page letter to Gerald Wood (Dr Karl Shuker)

The cats alluded to in the newspaper report mentioned by AZ in her letter were of course Kellas cats. Recorded from the Scottish Highlands, including the environs of the hamlet of Kellas, these predominantly black, distinctive-looking felids had first come to public and media attention in 1984, but they had subsequently been shown to be introgressive (i.e. highly-complex, multi-generational) hybrids of Scottish wildcats and domestic cats (as opposed to a new species in their own right, despite certain media reports erroneously claiming this). I had predicted this identity for them in my book Mystery Cats of the World (1989), and in greater detail within my scientific paper reviewing the Kellas cat published in the International Society of Cryptozoology's peer-reviewed journal Cryptozoology (vol. 9, 1990).

My book Mystery Cats of the World , featuring a stuffed Kellas cat on its front cover (Dr Karl Shuker)

After receiving AZ's letter from Susan Wood, and reading it with great interest, on 11 January 1993 I wrote to AZ, providing information concerning the Kellas cat, and including a request for additional information regarding the mystery cat's morphology. On 20 January, I received a detailed 5-page handwritten reply, which included a sketch of the incident involving the cat. Once again, I have scanned this and now present it in full as follows, with only identity details appertaining to AZ et al. blacked out:

AZ's 5-page illustrated letter sent to me on 20 January 1993 (Dr Karl Shuker)

As you will see from reading this second letter, AZ now seemed less certain that the cat had been a Kellas cat. And as no mention was made of the latter felid's usually conspicuous fangs, white guard hairs, white throat patch, and often gracile form, I too harbour doubts as to whether this is truly what their feline assailant had been. To my mind, it seems more likely that it was an exceptionally large black feral domestic cat (indicated by its pointed tail), sporting cryptic tabby markings analogous (if not homologous) to the cryptic rosettes of melanistic leopards (aka black panthers) and melanistic jaguars.

In response to AZ's request, I wrote back on 4 February 1993, explaining the term 'introgressive', but I never received any further reply from AZ. So here, 19 years later, is where the case remains, still unresolved, but nonetheless offering tantalising evidence that oversized black feral domestics do indeed occur. This is a phenomenon already evinced in Australia (it should be noted that one of the principal genes for black coat colouration in domestic cats also increases body size), and in my view it is seemingly increasingly likely as an explanation for a sizeable proportion of all but the biggest black mystery cats reported from Britain and elsewhere too.

An Australian black feral domestic cat (Glogster.com)