Cross-post from Omani Owl thread; ref:
[Originally Posted by GMK View Post
an always known to be extant rail in Zapata, Cuba, as having been lost for 40 years.
Guy,
I don't wish to divert attention from the subject of the OP, but am very interested in any tangible evidence of this extancy, whether it be a photograph, sound recording or recent specimen.
cheers, alan
Alan,
I chose my words carefully in the post above. There isn't any tangible evidence (your words), i.e. documentation (mine), to support any of the records over the past 40 years, just as there isn’t to support Andy Mitchell’s sighting. Personally, I believe that Andy saw the species, but his record is no more or less valid than those claimed by other people over the past 4-5 decades (e.g. Arturo Kirkconnell, three times). In other words, the species is no more extant now than it was before. So, perhaps it has been possibly extinct for something in the region of c. 75 years (if you go back to the last specimen record), given that there is no documentation (i.e. physical evidence) of the species since then. You can view it two ways: there’s been no documented record for donkey’s years (a lot more than 40), and there still hasn’t, or Andy’s record is fundamentally good (though undocumented), but just the latest in a comparatively small series of sight-only reports. BirdLife seem to want to present it as something betwixt and between these two options, which personally I think is something of a falsehood. Furthermore, until this press release, no one was suggesting that the species had not been recorded for 40 years, i.e. no doubts had been expressed concerning its survival into the current millennium despite that all of the audio reports had to be scrubbed.
This is why I say there’s not so much news in this 2014 sighting, as this one doesn’t possess anything to particularly set it apart, other than the fact that it came as a result of someone really doing their utmost to try and find the species.
We have known that the only recording billed as being Zapata Rail is attributable to Spotted Rail for a little less than 15 years (a fact, despite the efforts of some local guides to persuade gullible punters, usually Swedes or other nationalities that routinely tick birds on call, of the contrary) and we still don’t know the bird’s vocalizations, despite Andy’s census.
Finally, it’s worth remarking that Andy’s record is from La Turba, which is where everyone goes these days to search for the wren. So, nowhere especially remote...
And, incidentally, the predator that we have concerns about is not terrestrial. Some damn fool introduced tilapia into the Cienaga.