MASCARENE PARROT (Mascarinus mascarinus), an extinct parrot species endemic to the Mascarene island of Réunion in the western Indian Ocean. The species is reported to have become extinct in the eighteenth century, within two centuries of the island’s settlement. The Mascarene parrot was around 14-inches long with a large red bill, red legs, and round tail feathers. Its face was black with red markings. The color of the body and wings is unclear; stuffed specimens have been described as brown with bluish heads, but descriptions of the living birds say they were gray. Scientists propose that the color discrepancy is due to fading and aging of the taxidermied specimens.
A French traveler, Seiur Dubois, who visited Réunion in 1674, produced the first known account of the Mascarene parrots. Dubois described them as “[p]arrots a little bigger than pigeons, with plumage the colour of squirrel fur, a black hood on the head, the beak very large and the colour of fire.”
The Mascarene parrots’ native island of Réunion had been uninhabited until the seventeenth century when the French settled it. Little is known about the bird’s habitat and diet, but it is likely to have inhabited the island’s forests, feeding on fruits and nuts. It has been suggested that the Mascarene parrots also inhabited the nearby island of Mauritius at one point, due to an account of “russet parrots” observed there. While the two islands share many species, the veracity of this claim “can only be resolved by the discovery of fossil material on Mauritius,” as Julia Pender Hume notes.
As Réunion was settled, its parrots were hunted regularly. In 1704, the cartographer Jean Feuilley wrote that the birds were good to eat, especially between June and September, when they gained weight due to seasonal migratory patterns and changes in diet.
Several live Mascarene parrots were shipped back to France in the late eighteenth century, and the bird was scientifically described in 1771. The last known written accounts of the birds in the wild were produced in the 1770s, and it is likely that they had become extinct in the wild by 1800. Their extinction is believed to have been caused by hunting and disruption to the island’s ecology. Of the eight parrot species indigenous to the Mascarene islands, only one, the echo parakeet, has survived.
A single Mascarene parrot lived in the King of Bavaria’s menagerie until 1834. Today, two stuffed specimens of the bird exist. In Paris, the holotype from the original 1771 scientific description is housed in the Muséum National d’Historie Naturelle. The other specimen, located in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, was purchased from London’s Leverian Museum in 1806.