Delalande's Coua

"Among the largest of the world's cuckoos was the 55cm (22in.) Delalande's Madagascar Coucal.  It was an impressive bird: dark blue above and chestnut below . . . Although the last Delalande's Coucal actually captured by Europeans was in 1834 (by the Frenchman Bernier), there were reliable reports of native trappings of the birds in the first two decades of the twentieth century . . . Local hunting, then probably had some effect on the Coucals . . . but the main cause of their disappearance was habitat destruction and introduced rodents. The bird probably became extinct about 1920, certainly by 1932 there was no evidence of it."