by In 2022, an ornithologist high in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia saw the emerald green and cobalt blue feathers of the Santa Marta sabrewing. A great humpback, it has only been documented twice since 1879. As the bird sat on a branch, the ornithologist, Yurgen Vega, took images.
Once lost to science, now found.
The bird was on the American Bird Conservancy’s 10 most wanted list, which sits atop a longer list of “lost birds,” formally defined as those not documented by photographic, audio or genetic evidence for ten at least a year.
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A main goal of the list is to convince bird watchers and others to look for these birds when they go out in the field, and to bring back evidence that the birds are not extinct.
People have been searching for lost birds for years. But the Conservancy formalized the process in 2020, in partnership with two other groups, Re:wild and BirdLife International, as the Search for Lost Birds project.
Researchers from the groups published a paper in June containing a definitive list of birds that must be found. They scoured thousands of photos, videos and audio recordings in birding databases such as iNaturalist and xeno-canto. The study concluded that 144 bird species have been lost to the scientific world but may still exist.
“Through increased exposure in global ornithology and birding networks, there is huge potential to learn more about little-known and highly threatened birds,” said Cameron Rutt, lead author of the paper who coordinated the project for American Bird Conservancy until recently.
Once the birds are documented, experts analyze how they can be protected and studied. Since the rediscovery of Santa Marta’s sabrewings, for example, researchers have been studying the habitat requirements and biology of the birds and recently published a paper on their findings.
They identified five small populations of the birds, about 50 individuals, in a small forested valley on one fork of the Guatapurí River in Colombia. The sabrewing population is a case of micro-endemism, experts say, a species limited to a very small, specific place. It is considered critically endangered.
Discovering new species prompts a list of challenges. What is the best way to protect it, whether from storms, changing climates or crowds? Esteban Botero-Delgadillo, director of conservation science for SELVA, a conservation organization in Colombia, said he and others were worried “if this news got out there would be a lot of bird watchers and people.”
Because of that, he said, they were “very vague about where he was for over a year.” The bird is on Native land, which makes management more complicated.
Violence can be a danger in the habitats of some lost birds. A reserve was created due to the rediscovery in 1999 of a small cluster of yellow-eared parrots, striking green birds with yellow markings in western Colombia. The population grew to thousands.
In 2021, the environmentalist who nursed the population to a healthy number, Gonzalo Cardona, was shot and killed by an unknown criminal gang, his body buried in a shallow grave. Botero-Delgadillo said his team must also be cautious in the field.
Another bird recently found on the top 10 list is the black-naped pheasant pigeon. The chicken-sized bird was found in a remote region of Papua New Guinea in 2022 after not being documented for 126 years.
Although a bird may not have been documented by science for a long time, that does not mean it has been lost to local people. To find the pheasant pigeon, the most endangered land bird in Papua New Guinea, researchers traveled to villages where the bird was last seen.
Among them was John C. Mittermeier, founder of the Lost Bird Search Project. “The people who live there are mostly subsistence farmers, fishermen and hunters so they know the land and the wildlife,” he said. “We asked them if they had seen this species,” whose local name is auwo.
One day one of the birds went in front of a camera trap that had been set up.
“It would be nice to see those first photos of the unicorn pheasant pigeon,” Mittermeier said. “It’s the kind of moment you dream about your whole life as a conservationist and bird watcher.”
Three species in North America are considered lost. The best known is the ivory-billed woodpecker. The last sighting that was universally accepted in the United States was in Louisiana in 1944. It was seen again in Cuba in 1987. There have been no confirmed sightings since. Due to gruesome videos of what might be a bird, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has not declared the bird extinct.
The other two North American birds are the Eskimo thrush and the Bachman’s cormorant.
It did not take long for some of the 144 birds lost in the project to be found; more than a dozen are already located. The first came before the paper was published: Joshua Bergmark, a tour guide with Ornis Birding Expeditions, captured the mussau triller, a small bird with a long tail and long wings, in Papua New Guinea.
Mittermeier was happy about that news, and he felt even more so this week when the project said the one-colored thrush had been documented in Bolivia.
“The enthusiasm of people around the world makes me hopeful about the possibility of finding more of these lost birds,” he said.
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