Once populating Réunion, this species of starling is thought to have been first recorded by Étienne de Flacourt of the French East India Company in 1658. It was noted to be delicious by Sieur Dubois in 1674, especially when it is fat --- a reference to the bird's summer feeding cycles. As a twentieth-century natural historian elaborated somewhat caustically: It became very fat in June and July, and may have itself been used for food, for it had none of the usual starling alertness, being so stupid that it could easily be knocked down with a stick. Despite this same scientist proclaiming the passerine's extinction to be an ornithological mystery, Julian P. Hume argues that extreme deforestation was the cause, with contemporary observers recording mass culling to increase the productivity of farms. (In 1807, for example, Levaillant charged the starling with causing big damage to coffee trees.) Eulogizing the bird's extinction in the mid-nineteenth century, Eugène Jacob de Cordemoy wrote: I have known the bird you ask me about since childhood . . . . After ten years spent in Paris I did not find a single one in the forests where formerly they flew about in flocks. All ruthlessly destroyed. I shall never forgive myself for the part, slight though it was, which I took in the matter.