The
Babbler species is one of the most common in India and one which you can learn
more about from my earlier posting here.
Below
is information on the rediscovery of this species (in the low-lands of
Indonesia) which was believed to have been extinct for 170 years. One hopes
that the black-browed Babbler also peacefully still lives in the forests of
India.
To
read the paper on the discovery, published in the journal BirdingASIA in an article entitled: 'Missing for 170 years—the rediscovery of Black-browed
Babbler Malacocincla perspicillata on Borneo'
go this link here
More
than 150 species of birds around the world are considered "lost" with
no confirmed sightings in the past decade. A representative of Global Wildlife
Conservation announced that "Discoveries like this are incredible and give
us so much hope that it's possible to find other species that have been lost
for decades or longer."
Black-Browed Babbler
The
Black-browed Babbler has only ever been documented once—when it was first
described by scientists around 1848. But late last year, two men in Indonesian
Borneo saw a bird they didn't recognise and snapped photos of it before
releasing the palm-size creature back into the forest, according to Global
Wildlife Conservation.
Ornithologists
later identified the bird as the Black-browed Babbler and were astounded to
find that the species was alive and well, despite not having been seen since
before Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species".
One
Ornithologist reported that the bird is often called "the biggest enigma
in Indonesian ornithology—and that its astounding to think that it's not
extinct and still living in certain lowland forests."
