A bird that was assumed extinct was sighted recently. The bird which has been sighted is Black-browed Babbler. It was last seen more than 170 years ago in the rainforests of Borneo.
Key Points
- Ornithologists were surprised to rediscover Black-browed Babbler which was believed to be extinct.
- The bird was only ever been documented once. It was first described by scientists around the year 1848, eluding all subsequent efforts to find it.
- According to Global Wildlife Conservation, in the late last year, two men in Indonesian Borneo saw a bird but they didn’t recognize it.
- However, they took pictures of the palm-sized creature before releasing it back into the forest.
- Ornithologists were astounded to find that the Black-browed Babbler was alive.
- The bird was not seen since before Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”.
- Black-browed Babbler is often called ‘the biggest enigma in Indonesian ornithology.’ It’s mind-blowing to think that it’s not extinct and it’s still living in these lowland forests.
- Very little is known about the bird. It has brown and grey feathers.
Over 150 species of birds around the world are considered “lost” with no confirmed sightings in the last decade.
The rediscovery of Black-browed Babbler was published in the journal BirdingASIA. Panji Gusti Akbar is the lead author of a paper and Ding Li Yong is the co-author.
