Auckland Islands Shore Plover

The Auckland Islands Shore Plover (Thinornis rossii), also called Ross’s Plover, is a small extinct plover known only from a single specimen, apparently collected in the Auckland Islands in 1840 by the crew of HMS Erebus, and now in the collection of the British Natural History Museum. Its status as a species distinct from the Shore Plover was uncertain for many years. Charles Fleming speculated about whether the lone specimen represented an unknown intermediate plumage, a melanistic mutant, or a separate species. The consensus today, however, is that it is an immature Thinornis novaeseelandiae with an incorrectly-recorded location.