Aplonis ulietensis (Gmelin, 1788)
Raiatea starling, Bay starling, Bay thrush, Chestnut thrush, Ra’iatea thrush
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonyms: Turdus ulietensis Gmelin, 1788; Merula ulietensis (Gmelin, 1788) [Ramsay, 1879]; Turdus badius Forster, 1844
Conservation Status
Extinct (Greenway, 1967; Day, 1981; Fuller, 1988, 2000; Knox & Walters, 1994; Hume & Walters, 2012; BirdLife International, 2016, 2017, 2024; Hume, 2017; Kittelberger et al., 2024)
Last record: May 1774 (Kittelberger et al., 2024 [as 1774])
IUCN RedList status: Extinct
Distribution & Habitat
Raiatea (=Ulietea), Leeward Islands, French Polynesia
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Media
Above: Georg Forster's 1774 watercolour painting of the Raiatea starling, albeit under the misapprehension that it was a thrush (genus Turdus). Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Above: John Gerrard Keulemans' lithographic plate depicting the Raiatea starling as a thrush, published in Seebohm (1880). Source: Wikimedia Commons.
References
Original scientific description:
Gmelin, J. F. (1788). Caroli a Linné, Systema naturae per regna tria naturae secundum classes, ordines, genera, species cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I, part I. Lipsiae: Impensis Georg. Emmanuel Beer.
Other references:
BirdLife International. (2016). Aplonis ulietensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22734867A104350549. Downloaded on 16 December 2016.
BirdLife International. (2017). Aplonis ulietensis (amended version of 2016 assessment). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017: e.T22734867A119212332. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2017-3.RLTS.T22734867A119212332.en. Accessed on 02 July 2022.
BirdLife International. (2024). Aplonis ulietensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2024: e.T22734867A246097401. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2024-2.RLTS.T22734867A246097401.en. Accessed on 15 April 2026.
Brooks, T. (2000). Extinct species. In: BirdLife International (ed.), Threatened Birds of the World, pp. 701-708. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona and Cambridge, U.K.
Day, David. (1981). The Doomsday Book of Animals: A Natural History of Vanished Species. New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press.
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N. J., Christie, D. A., Elliott, A., Fishpool, L. D. C., Boesman, P. and Kirwan, G. M. (2016). HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 2: Passerines. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona, Spain and Cambridge, UK.
del Hoyo, J., et al. (2020) Birds of the World. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA
Faurby, Søren, Matthews, Tom J., Triantis, Kostas A. and Sayol, Ferran. (2026). Quantifying the unrecorded loss of avian phylogenetic diversity. Ecography 2026: e08267. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08267
Fuller, Errol. (1988). Extinct Birds. New York: Facts on File Publications. 256 pp.
Fuller, Errol. (2000). Extinct Birds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [pp. 314-315]
Greenway James C. (1967). Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, 2nd ed. American Committee for International Wild Life Protection, Special Publication no 13, 2nd edn. Dover Publications, New York.
Hume, Julian Pender. (2017). Extinct Birds, 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Hume, Julian Pender and Walters, Michael. (2012). Extinct Birds. London: T & AD Poyser. 544 pp.
Kittelberger, Kyle D., Tanner, Colby J., Buxton, Amy N., Prewett, Amira and Şekercioğlu, Çağan Hakkı. (2024). Correlates of avian extinction timing around the world since 1500 CE. Avian Research 15: 100213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avrs.2024.100213 [Supplementary data (List of 216 taxa)]
Knox, Alan G. and Walters, Michael P. (1994). Extinct and endangered birds in the collections of The Natural History Museum. British Ornithologists' Club Occasional Publications 1: 1-292. [p. 213]
Matthews, Thomas J., Triantis, Kostas A., Wayman, Joseph P., Martin, Thomas E., Hume, Julian P., Cardoso, Pedro, Faurby, Søren, Mendenhall, Chase D., Dufour, Paul, Rigal, François, Cooke, Rob, Whittaker, Robert J., Pigot, Alex L., Thébaud, Christophe, Jørgensen, Maria Wagner, Benavides, Eva, Soares, Filipa C., Ulrich, Werner, Kubota, Yasuhiro, Sadler, Jon P., Tobias, Joseph A. and Sayol, Ferran. (2024). The global loss of avian functional and phylogenetic diversity from anthropogenic extinctions. Science 386(6717): 55-60. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk7898 [Supplementary Materials; Dryad dataset; Zenodo codeset]
Matthews, Thomas J., Wayman, Joseph P., Cardoso, Pedro, Sayol, Ferran, Hume, Julian P., Ulrich, Werner, Tobias, Joseph A., Soares, Filipa C., Thébaud, Christophe, Martin, Thomas E. and Triantis, Kostas A. (2022). Threatened and extinct island endemic birds of the world: Distribution, threats and functional diversity. Journal of Biogeography 49(11): 1920-1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14474 [Appendix S1 (.docx); Appendix S2 (.pdf)]
Sayol, Ferran, Steinbauer, Manuel J., Blackburn, Tim M., Antonelli, Alexandre and Faurby, Søren. (2020). Anthropogenic extinctions conceal widespread evolution of flightlessness in birds. Science Advances 6(49): eabb6095. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb6095 [Supplementary Material (Data File S1)]
Seebohm, Henry (1880). Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or Perching Birds, in the Collection of the British Museum. Cichlomorphae: Part II. Containing the Family Turdidae (Warblers and Thrushes). London: British Museum.
Tyrberg, Tommy. (2009). Holocene avian extinctions, pp. 63-106. In: Turvey, Samuel T. (ed.). Holocene Extinctions. Oxford, UK & New York, USA: Oxford University Press. xii + 352 pp.
https://extinctanimals.proboards.com/thread/8822/aplonis-ulietensis-raiatea-starling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiatea_starling