The Pennant’s, the crimson and the yellow

THE first of Captain James Cook’s three “Voyages of Discovery” to the South Seas was aboard the Endeavour. She set sail from Portsmouth, England, in 1768, with one of the journey’s “three secrets” being to record natural history, led by the 25-year-old Joseph Banks.

In (1980), co-author Graeme Phipps states: “Rosellas were taken to England with the Endeavour in 1770 and were apparently given by Joseph Banks – with other animals from the expedition - to a leading zoologist, Thomas Pennant. John Latham (1740-1837), like others of his era, graduated in medicine, then spent his livelihood as an ornithologist! His original designation named the bird Psittacus pennanti and its common name as an aviary bird in England