Réunion Night-Heron

The Réunion Night-Heron (Nycticorax duboisi) is an extinct species of night-heron belonging to the family Ardeidae, formerly endemic to the island of Réunion in the southwestern Indian Ocean. The species is known only from a brief historical description by the early European traveler Dubois, who visited Réunion in 1671–1672 and described a large, gray-colored bird with a white belly that was hunted and eaten by settlers. No specimens are known to exist in museum collections, and no skeletal remains have been formally identified with confidence as belonging to this species.

Based on Dubois's description and comparison with closely related island night-herons such as Nycticorax mauritianus from Mauritius and Nycticorax megacephalus from Rodrigues, the Réunion Night-Heron was likely a large, robust night-heron adapted to island conditions. Island-endemic herons typically show a tendency toward increased body size (island gigantism) and reduced flight ability compared to continental relatives, features consistent with life on a predator-free island.

The preferred habitat of the Réunion Night-Heron was presumably similar to that of related night-herons: forested stream margins, coastal wetlands, and other freshwater and brackish habitats on the island. As with other island night-herons, it likely fed on fish, frogs, crustaceans, and other aquatic prey, as well as potentially on terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates in the forest interior.

The species became extinct shortly after European settlement of Réunion in the seventeenth century. The causes of extinction were consistent with those affecting other endemic island birds at the time: direct hunting by European settlers and their introduced animals, habitat clearing, and the impact of introduced rats, cats, and other mammalian predators on a population that had evolved in the absence of such threats.

The Réunion Night-Heron is listed as Extinct by the IUCN and is poorly documented even by the standards of historical extinctions, known almost entirely from a single traveler's account. Its existence highlights the rapid and poorly recorded extinction of many island bird species during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.