Journal of the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology
Online ISSN : 1883-3659
Print ISSN : 0044-0183
ISSN-L : 0044-0183
Twenty Japanese Sketches of Extinct Crested Shelduck Tadorna cristata (Kuroda) from the Edo Period (1603-1867)
Ryozo KakizawaHiroshi Sugawara
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JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

1989 Volume 21 Issue 2 Pages 326-339

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Abstract

Tadorna cristata (Kuroda) is known only from three extant specimens. The first, a female, was taken near Vladivostok in 1877, and preserved in the Copenhagen Museum. The second specimen, also a female, and the third specimen, a male, were taken from near Fusan, Korea in 1916, and 1913 or 1914, and preserved in the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology. The first specimen was described in 1890 by Sclater, and it was then considered to be a hybrid between the Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea) and the Falcated Duck (Anas falcata). In 1917, Dr. Nagamichi Kuroda described the second specimen and gave it the name Pseudotadorna cristata. The inconsistency between Sclater's hybrid view and Kuroda's new species view was solved in favor of the latter, when Kuroda obtained the third, male specimen, and described it, along with the discovery of four sketches of the Crested Shelduck from the Edo period. This species has been extremely rare, and close to extinction evre since its discovery in 1887. Recently three other old sketches of the Crested Shelduck have been reported, two of them by the present authors. In this paper twelve published sketches of the species from the Edo period have been introduced, and all twenty known sketches are arranged in order based on their characteristics and descriptions, and the status of it's occurrence during the Edo period is disccussed. In conclusion, we presumed that a few Crested Shelducks were imported from Kyohou period (1716-1735) and it actually migrated once or twice to Hokkaido (northern Japan), and was captured to be illustrated as a living bird.

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