The Mauritius blue pigeon (Alectroenas nitidissimus) is an extinct species of blue pigeon formerly endemic to the Mascarene island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. It has two extinct relatives from the Mascarenes and three extant ones from other islands. It is the type species of the genus of blue pigeons, Alectroenas. It had white hackles around the head, neck and breast and blue plumage on the body, and it was red on the tail and the bare parts of the head. These colours were thought similar to those of the Dutch flag, a resemblance reflected in its French common name, Pigeon Hollandais. The juveniles may have been partially green. It was 30 cm (12 in) long and larger and more robust than any other blue pigeon species. It fed on fruits, nuts, and molluscs, and was once widespread in the forests of Mauritius. The bird was first mentioned in the 17th century and was described several times thereafter, but very few accounts describe the behaviour of living specimens. The oldest record of the species is two sketches from a 1601–1603 ship's journal. Several stuffed specimens reached Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, while only three stuffed specimens exist today. A live bird kept in the Netherlands around 1790 was long thought to have been a Mauritius blue pigeon, but examination of illustrations depicting it have shown it was most likely a Seychelles blue pigeon. The species is thought to have become extinct in the 1830s due to deforestation and predation.
Taxonomy The oldest record of the Mauritius blue pigeon is two sketches in the 1601–1603 journal of the Dutch ship Gelderland. The birds appear to have been freshly killed or stunned. The drawings were made by the Dutch artist Joris Joostensz Laerle on Mauritius, but were not published until 1969. François Cauche in 1651 briefly mentioned "white, black and red turtle doves", encountered in 1638, which is thought to be the first unequivocal mention of the bird. The next account is that of Jean-François Charpentier de Cossigny in the mid-18th century.
The French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat described the bird in 1782, calling it Pigeon Hollandais (Dutch pigeon), a French vernacular name that derives from its red, white, and blue colouration, reminiscent of the Dutch flag (the French flag did not have these colours before the 1789 revolution). He had collected two specimens during a voyage in 1774. These syntype specimens were deposited in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. By 1893, only one of them, specimen MNHN n°C.G. 2000–727, still existed, and had been damaged by sulphuric acid in an attempt at fumigation. Since Sonnerat named and described them in French, the scientific naming of the bird was left to the Tyrolean naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, who did not observe a specimen himself, but Latinised Sonnerat's description in 1786. He named the bird Columba nitidissima, which means "most brilliant pigeon". The German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin described the bird with the species name franciae (referring to France) in 1789, and the French naturalist Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre used the name batavica (referring to Batavia) in his 1790 description. In 1840 the English zoologist George Robert Gray named a new genus, Alectroenas, for the Mauritius blue pigeon; alektruon in Greek means domestic cock, and oinas means dove. Alectroenas nitidissima is the type species of the genus, which includes all blue pigeons. The specific name was emended from A. nitidissimus to A. nitidissima by the IOC World Bird List in 2012.
Another skin arrived at the Paris museum in 1800, collected by Colonel M. Mathieu for the French ornithologist Louis Dufresne. It was sold in 1819 among other items, was sent to Edinburgh, and is now in the National Museum of Scotland as specimen NMS Z.1819.1.1. It was not identified as a Mauritius blue pigeon until the British ornithologist Alfred Newton saw it in 1879. The last specimen recorded was shot in Savanne in 1826 and given to Julien Desjardins, founder of the Mauritius Natural History Museum in Port Louis, where it is still located, though in poor condition. Only these three taxidermic specimens still exist. Subfossil remains of the Mauritius blue pigeon were collected in the Mare aux Songes swamp by Théodore Sauzier in 1889. More were collected by Etienne Thirioux around 1900. They are thought to have been found near Le Pouce mountain and Plaine des Roches.
Evolution Alectroenas blue pigeons are closely interrelated and occur widely throughout islands in the western Indian Ocean. They are allopatric and can therefore be regarded as a superspecies. There are three extant species: the Madagascar blue pigeon (A. madagascariensis), the Comoros blue pigeon (A. sganzini), and the Seychelles blue pigeon (A. pulcherrima). The three Mascarene islands were each home to a species, all of which are extinct: the Mauritius blue pigeon, the Rodrigues blue pigeon (A. payandeei), and the Réunion blue pigeon (A. sp.). Compared with other pigeons, the blue pigeons are medium to large, stocky, and have longer wings and tails. All the species have distinct mobile hackles on the head and neck. The tibiotarsus is comparatively long and the tarsometatarsus short. The blue pigeons may have colonised the Mascarenes, the Seychelles or a now submerged hot spot island by "island hopping". They may have evolved into a distinct genus there before reaching Madagascar. Their closest genetic relative is the cloven-feathered dove of New Caledonia (Drepanoptila holosericea), from which they separated 8–9 million years ago. Their ancestral group appears to be the fruit doves (Ptilinopus) of Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Misidentified records
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