Grand Martin-Pêcheur de la nouvelle Guinée [Kookaburra]

THE FIRST ENGRAVING OF THE KOOKABURRA 1776

The first engraving of the Kookaburra from a specimen given to the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat at Cape of Good Hope by Joseph Banks in 1770. Banks instructed Sonnerat to deliver the specimen to fellow naturalist Dr Philibert Commerson in Mauritius. Sonnerat sailed there, giving it to Commerson’s draughtsman, Paul Philippe Sanguin de Jossigny who made a sketch of it. However, following Commerson’s premature death in 1773, Sonnerat not only kept Jossigny’s illustration but unscrupulously signed it and passing it off as his own work, and included it in his book on New Guinea, with an added a caption indicating that it came  from New Guinea. Later when the British ornithologist John Latham described Bank’s remaining specimen of the Kookaburra in 1782 in his A General Synopsis of Birds, he perpetuated Sonnerat’s error, which explains how the bird obtained its early scientific name Dacelo novaeguineae although it doesn’t occur there.

Banks had caught several Kookaburras while exploring Australia’s east coast on Cook’s first voyage of discovery in the Endeavour. The Kookaburra is only native to open woodland and forests of Eastern Australia, with the exception of Cape York (it was introduced to south-western Australia and Tasmania). It doesn’t occur in New Guinea.

Kookaburra (in various forms) was recorded from different indigenous languages,…Perhaps the earliest is that of Bennett (1834), who recorded that ‘the Natives at Yas (sic) call the bird “Gogera or “Gogobera“. The following are Aboriginal words for Kookaburra;

Guuguubarra in Wiradjuri
Jawawoodoo in Gooniyandi
Kuukakaka in Paakantyi.

References:
Olsen,
Stanbury/Phipps p.88, ill. p.88

From Sonnerat (Pierre), Voyage à la Nouvelle Guinée, dans lequel on trouve la description des lieux, des observations physiques & morales

Collections:
National Library Australia:  Bib ID2513810
State Library NSW: Call Numbers DSM/Q988.4/17A1
State Library Victoria: RARELT 919.5 So5

Common name: Kookaburra 
Binomial name: Dacelo novaeguineae 
First described: Johann Hermann 1783