South Island kōkako
The South Island kōkako (Callaeas cinereus) is a possibly extinct forest bird endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. Unlike its close relative, the North Island kōkako (C. wilsoni), it has largely orange wattles, with only a small patch of blue at the base, and was also known as the orange-wattled crow (though it was not a corvid). The last accepted sighting in 2007 was the first considered genuine since 1967, although there have been several other unauthenticated reports. Taxonomy The South Island kōkako was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He coined the binomial name Glaucopis cinerea. The specific epithet cinereus is Latin meaning "ash-grey" or "ash-coloured". Gmelin based his description on the "cinereous wattle-bird" that had been described and illustrated in 1781 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham had examined a specimen in the Leverian Museum in London that had come from New Zealand. The North Island kokako was formerly considered as subspecies of Callaeas cinerea, but since 2001 North Island birds have been officially recognised as C. wilsoni, and genetic evidence