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February 2013. This fly was recently found on Rarotonga on a juvenile Pacific Pigeon (Ducula pacifica). It looks like the Pigeon Lousefly, Pseudolynchia canariensis. I cannot find any other Polynesian record of this species and am hopeful that someone can shed some light on its ID from the image or the specimen.
Later, thanks to Bradley Sinclair of the Canadian National Collection of Insects for identifying the specimen as Ornithoctona plicata (von
Olfers, 1816). This species is an obligatory blood-sucking parasite of birds with a distribution: Mauritius, India, Indonesia, PNG, Australia (QLD, NSW), Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and now Cook Islands.
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