Description
Newton's Parakeet was 40 cm (16 in) long, about half of the length being the length of its tail feathers. Its general appearance was similar to the extant Psittacula species, and it had the black collar characteristic of its genus; however, it differed by its slate blue, not green, plumage. The specimens show it had a yellow iris, was a darker grey blue on its upper surfaces than lower surfaces, and the male had a dark line on its face running from its cere to its eyes, which was less prominent in the female. The female had a greyer head, and the females black collar was not so prominent as the male's, and did not extend to the back of the neck.
Early travellers reported parrots having a red patch on the shoulders of their wings, a feature which in not seen on either of the two surviving complete specimens, leading to speculation the male specimen is in juvenile plumage. The early reports suggest that green birds also existed; whether there were two color morphs, or the green coloration was borne by recently-fledged birds, or whether at one time a short-lived colony of a related green species existed on Rodrigues cannot now be determined.
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)