Newton's parakeet was first recorded by François Leguat in his 1708 memoir "A New Voyage to the East Indies". Leguat was the leader of a group of nine French Huguenot refugees who colonised Rodrigues between 1691 and 1693 after they were marooned there. Subsequent accounts were by Julien Tafforet, who was marooned on the island in 1726, in his "Relation de l'Île Rodrigue", and then by the French mathematician Alexandre Pingré, who travelled to Rodrigues to view the 1761 transit of Venus.