Description
The Rodrigues Rail was a plump, flightless rail with bright grey plumage, perhaps flecked with white, and it had a red bill and legs, and a red, naked area around its eyes. It was somewhat smaller than its closest relative, the Red Rail. The bird's exact length is unknown, but it was about the size of a chicken. The strong bill varied greatly in size and shape; some specimens had short and almost straight bills, and others had much longer bills that were prominently curved. It is unknown whether this wa related to sexual dimorphism or to individual variation. Its cranium was 38 millimetres (1.5 in) long by 20 millimetres (0.79 in) wide, and the bill was 77 millimetres (3.0 in) long. The pelvis was large and strongly built in proportion to the size of the bird.
The Rodrigues Rail had somewhat larger wings than the Red Rail, but the species' leg proportions, pelvis and sacrum was also similar. It also had a proportionately longer humerus, a broader and shorter skull, and having longer and lower nostrils from the Red Rail, from which it differed considerably in plumage, based on early descriptions.
Read more about this topic: Rodrigues Rail
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“An intentional object is given by a word or a phrase which gives a description under which.”
—Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)