 In 1725 , the French sailor Julien Tafforet was marooned on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues for nine months , and his report of his time there was later published as Relation d 'île Rodrigue . In the report , he described encounters with various indigenous species , including a white and black bird which fed on eggs and dead tortoises . He stated that it was confined to the offshore islet of Île Gombrani , which was then called au Mât . François Leguat , a Frenchman who was also marooned on Rodrigues from 1691 to 1693 and had written about several species there ( his account was published in 1708 ) , did not have a boat , and therefore could not explore the various islets as Tafforet did . No people who later traveled to the island mentioned the bird . In an article written in 1875 , the British ornithologist Alfred Newton attempted to identify the bird from Tafforet 's description , and hypothesised that it was related to the extinct hoopoe starling ( Fregilupus varius ) , which formerly inhabited nearby Réunion . 
