Portal:Islands

The Inaccessible Island rail (Laterallus rogersi) is a small bird of the rail family, Rallidae. Endemic to Inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic, it is the smallest extant flightless bird in the world. The species was formally described by physician Percy Lowe in 1923 but had first come to the attention of scientists 50 years earlier. The Inaccessible Island rail's taxonomic affinities and origin were a long-standing mystery; in 2018 its closest relative was identified as the South American dot-winged crake, and it was decided that both species are best classified in the genus Laterallus.

The Inaccessible Island rail has brown plumage, black bill and feet, and adults have a red eye. It occupies most habitats on Inaccessible Island, from the beaches to the central plateau, feeding on a variety of small invertebrates and also some plant matter. Pairs are territorial and monogamous, with both parents being responsible for incubating the eggs and raising the chicks. Its adaptations to living on a tiny island at high densities include low base metabolic rates, small clutch sizes, and flightlessness. (Full article...)

Native Hawaiian cuisine refers to the traditional Hawaiian foods that predate contact with Europeans and immigration from East and Southeast Asia. The cuisine consisted of a mix of indigenous plants and animals as well as plants and animals introduced by Polynesian voyagers, who became the Native Hawaiians. (Full article...)

• ... that Captain Warren of HMS Seringapatam saw the island of Chios in flames, but would give no help, as he had been ordered to observe strict neutrality in the Greek War of Independence?
• ... that CBS executive Laurence Tisch found out on a tennis court in the U.S. Virgin Islands that rival network NBC had bought his company's affiliate station in Miami?
• ... that the name of Ireland's Eye off Howth northeast of Dublin has nothing to do with the organ but can actually be translated as "Ireland's island"?
• ... that after many years of farming crops, Russ Island was deliberately flooded for salt farming?
• ... that te lapa, an unproven and unexplained oceanic light phenomenon, might have been used by Polynesians to find islands in the Pacific Ocean?
• ... that three decades after chasing away surveyors for a previous railroad with guns, residents of Wickford, Rhode Island, built their own railroad?