Tahiti rail Tahiti rail The Tahiti rail, Tahitian red-billed rail, or Pacific red-billed rail ("Gallirallus pacificus") is an extinct species of rail that lived on Tahiti. It was first recorded during James Cook's second voyage around the world (1772–1775), on which it was illustrated by Georg Forster and described by Johann Reinhold Forster. No specimens have been preserved. As well as the documentation by the Forsters, there have been claims that the bird also existed on the nearby island of Mehetia. The Tahiti rail appears to have been closely related to, and perhaps derived from, the buff-banded rail, and has also been
Tahiti explorer Juan Fernández in his expedition of 1576–1577. The next European visitors arrived during the period of intense Anglo-French rivalry that filled the twelve years between the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War . The first European to have visited Tahiti according to existing records was lieutenant Samuel Wallis, who was circumnavigating the globe in , sighting the island on 18 June 1767, and eventually harbouring in Matavai Bay. This bay was situated on the territory of the chiefdom of Pare-Arue, governed by Tu (Tu-nui-e-a'a-i-te-Atua) and his regent Tutaha, and the chiefdom of Ha'apape, governed by Amo and