In the 1840s, a mystery bird was caught on an expedition to the East Indies. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, the nephew of former French leader Napoleon, described it to science and named it the black-browed babbler (Malacocincla perspicillata).
The species was never again seen in the wild, and a stuffed specimen featuring a bright yellow glass eye was the only proof of its existence.
However, the black-browed babbler has now been rediscovered in the rainforests of Borneo.
Two local men, Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan, chanced upon a bird that they did not recognize in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan province in October last year and managed to catch it.
They photographed the bird, released it and reported their find to birdwatching groups.
Experts from the region confirmed the bird’s identity, noting its strong bill, chocolate coloring and distinctive black eye-stripe.
Unlike the taxidermied specimen, the live bird’s iris was a striking maroon color.
“It feels surreal to know that we have found a species of bird presumed by experts to be extinct,” Rizky Fauzan said. “We didn’t expect it to be that special at all — we thought it was just another bird that we simply have never seen before.”
The uncertainty over the bird’s existence was compounded by confusion over when and where the first specimen was collected, with ornithologists assuming that the German naturalist Carl Schwaner discovered it in Java.
In 1895, the Swiss ornithologist Johann Buttikofer said that Schwaner was in Borneo at the time the bird was collected.
“This sensational finding confirms that the black-browed babbler comes from southeastern Borneo, ending the century-long confusion about its origins,” said Panji Gusti Akbar of the Indonesian ornithological group Birdpacker, who was the lead author of a paper detailing the bird’s rediscovery.
“We now also know what the black-browed babbler really looks like. The photographed bird showed several differences from the only known specimen, specifically the color of the iris, bill and leg,” he said. “These three parts of a bird’s body are known to lose their tint and are often artificially colored during the taxidermy process.”
More than 1,700 bird species live across the archipelago of Indonesia, with many remote islands not well surveyed by scientists, despite the region’s riches inspiring Alfred Russel Wallace’s theories of evolution 170 years ago.
Five new songbird species and five new subspecies were last year identified on the Indonesian islands of Taliabu, Peleng and Batudaka.
The black-browed babbler has survived, despite massive deforestation in lowland Borneo.
“There is therefore a very high possibility of it being severely threatened by habitat loss,” Akbar said.
Conservationists plan to visit the site where the bird was photographed as soon as COVID-19 restrictions allow.
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