Rarotonga Monarch (Pomarea dimidiata)

Jack a first that i have seen..excellent shot:clap: :clap: and a real beauty.Thanks for sharing.B

The male is lovely too, and the picture very good! This pair is very valuable, I don't think there are many pictures around of this rarity. Excellent work and thanks a lot for sharing these two pictures with all of us!!!

Never heard of this species before and it is new to the databse.

Good capture

Great photo Jack, however, it is not possible to sex the birds in the field. Both the "Pratt" guide and HBW have fallen into this trap. This bird is an adult, they take four years to reach adult plumage with the young birds being orange and it is possible to age them by the colour of the base of the lower mandible. From memory a 1st year will have an orange base whilst a third year will be blue (I will check my notes when I get home).

A wonderful conservation success story with the population down to the mid 20's in 1987 (?) and now around 300 birds with some released onto nearby Atiu. Again, I will check this when I get home as my memory could be failing me.

Did you manage to get any photos of the Starling as I only managed very poor record shots when I was there?

All the best
Marcus

Hi Jack,
It is wonderful to see you posting the birds in both colors. I agree with Marcus that "Pratt" and even very recent HBW Vol 11 state that male is dull grey and female is rufous, however the BirdLife source states that the color is based on its age. See http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/search/species_search.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=6076&m=0
So I am not 100% sure which one is right. Anyway just enjoy for photo for the time being B

Nice one, Jack!

I dug out the rest of the info that I had:

In their first year the birds are orange with a bright orange base to the lower mandible, the plumage stays the same for the second year but the bill base becomes duller, in the 3rd year the birds attain the grey plumage of adulthood with some traces of orange in the feathers whilst the bill base is blue which can be difficult to see in the field. In the 4th year the bill is all dark and the birds look like what is depicted as the male in "Pratt" (and HBW - sorry Steve!). When I was there in Aug 2005 there were 262 birds of which c55% are colour ringed, one bird was at least 24 years old - which is quite impressive for a relatively small passerine. The previous years tally was 282 but there was a series of cyclones that passed through the island in the interim which had threatened to put a larger dent into the population, but fortunately the effects weren't as bad as they could have been. 30 birds were relocated to Atiu and were doing well, more encouraging was the fact that they were starting to spread out form the Takitumu Conservation area.
The DoC from New Zealand first starting ringing the birds in 1984 and numbers continued to fall to a low of 29 in 1989 when a rat eradication program was instigated - the rest is history. In all these years of ringing only two other species of bird have been caught, one each of Rarotonga Starling and Long-tailed Cuckoo.

If anyone would like details of who to contact to see these birds then PM me, similarly if you would like to make a donation I will gladly pass on the relevant details.

All the best
Marcus