Loud, Red-Headed Bird Species Discovered

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A redheaded bird with a loud call would hardly seem to be hiding from the world, but researchers only recently discovered it singing away in a Cambodian jungle.

Called the Cambodian tailorbird (Orthotomus chaktomuk), it’s one of only two avian species found solely in Cambodia. The other one sounds equally distinctive. It’s called the Cambodian laughingthrush, and it is restricted to the remote Cardamom Mountains.

Aside from its red head, the Cambodian tailorbird sports a black throat. It lives in a dense, humid lowland jungle just outside of Cambodia’s urbanized capitol of Phnom Penh. It’s described in the Oriental Bird Club’s journal Forktail.

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“The modern discovery of an un-described bird species within the limits of a large populous city – not to mention 30 minutes from my home – is extraordinary,” lead author Simon Mahood of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said in a press release. “The discovery indicates that new species of birds may still be found in familiar and unexpected locations.”

The bird’s scientific name (chaktomuk) is an old Khmer word meaning four-faces. It describes where the bird is found: the area centered in Phnom Penh where the Tonle Sap, Mekong and Bassac Rivers come together.

Unfortunately this bucolic-sounding area is under threat from human encroachment. Our agriculture and urban activities keep pushing into such areas, pushing the native wildlife out.

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The WCS has already recommended that the new species be classified as Near Threatened under the IUCN’s Red List. Fortunately, the bird is found in the Baray Bengal Florican Conservation Area, where WCS is now working with local communities and the Forestry Administration to protect the Bengal florican and other threatened birds.

The last two decades have seen a sharp increase in the number of new bird species emerging from this and nearby regions, mostly due to exploration of remote areas. Newly described birds include various babbler species from isolated mountains in Vietnam, the bizarre bare-faced bulbul from Laos and the Mekong wagtail, first described in 2001 by WCS and other partners.

As Colin Poole, director of WCS Singapore and a co-author of the study on the new bird, said, “This discovery is one of several from Indochina in recent years, underscoring the region’s global importance for bird conservation.”

Co-author Jonathan C. Eames of BirdLife International’s OBE added, “Most newly discovered bird species in recent years have proved to be threatened with extinction or of conservation concern, highlighting the crisis facing the planet’s biodiversity.”

Steve Zack, WCS coordinator of bird conservation, concluded, “Asia contains a spectacular concentration of bird life, but is also under sharply increasing threats ranging from large scale development projects to illegal hunting. Further work is needed to better understand the distribution and ecology of this exciting newly described species to determine its conservation needs.”

Some 1.5 million people live in Phnom Penh, so maybe on quiet mornings people there have actually heard the bird singing, but didn’t consider the species. The bird has different songs. Here’s one that sounds a bit like a cell phone ring.

Image credit: Ashish John/WCS

Twin Giant Pandas Born in China

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A rare giant panda has given birth to twins in China, the first pair of the endangered species born in the world this year, conservation workers told state media Sunday.

They were born to a panda named Haizi at the Wolong Nature Reserve in China's southwest Sichuan province on Saturday evening, according to the Xinhua news agency.

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The first cub arrived at 4:54 pm (0954 GMT) and the second 10 minutes later, said workers at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on the reserve.

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The mother is still holding the first cub in her arms so staff have been unable to weigh it or determine its gender. But they said it should be healthy, given its size and the sounds it has been making.

The second cub is a female and weighs 79.2 grams (just under three ounces), the staff said, according to Xinhua.

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Haizi became pregnant after mating with males Bai Yang and Yi Bao in March -- most giant pandas are not good breeders when in captivity.

Fewer than 1,600 pandas remain in the wild, mainly in Sichuan, with around 300 in captivity around the world, the majority in China.

'Bubble-Pop' Bird May Be Rarest in U.S.

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The Gunnison sage-grouse, a bird with an unusual “bubble pop” mating call and display, could be America’s rarest bird, according to avian experts.

The bird was only discovered 13 years ago, and yet it’s already nearly a goner. Today, fewer than 5,000 of these birds remain in the wild, and they are rapidly dwindling.

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“In my view, the Gunnison sage-grouse is the most biologically endangered bird species in all of continental North America,” Cornell Lab of Ornithology director John Fitzpatrick said in a statement sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The chicken-sized bird has an amazingly unusual mating ritual. To court females, the males strut about while wagging their spiky tails and making a popping-like noise as they inflate yellow air sacs from their white chests.

Fitzpatrick and others are paying attention to this bird now, as it’s a candidate for listing as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Gunnison sage-grouse only lives in eastern Utah and Colorado.

“The Gunnison sage-grouse is now in imminent danger of a series of local population collapses, which — when they occur — will result in extinction of the species,” Fitzpatrick explained.

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Efforts by public agencies and private landowners to help stabilize the bird’s populations through private land easements, conservation plans and community education have not halted its decline, says Fitzpatrick.

Despite the bird’s precarious status, getting a species endangered classification can be a long, laborious process.

For example the Dakota skipper butterfly, on the candidate’s list since 1975, is now extinct in Indiana and Iowa. The Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake has been a candidate since 1982. And the Kittlitz’s murrelet, a small bird, has been on the candidate’s list for nearly 20 years.

“It is now urgent that the Gunnison sage-grouse be listed as an endangered species, and that a recovery team be assembled to fast-track recommended steps for halting the decline and imminent extinction of this remarkable bird,” said Fitzpatrick.

Bird Apps May Confuse Real Birds

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Some experts are warning that cell phone apps that mimic bird calls are too real.

Concerned that birds may misinterpret the sounds as coming from their feathered friends, rather than phones, and responding to them instead of, say, feeding their babies, experts in the United Kingdom are calling the apps “harmful.”

“Repeatedly playing a recording of birdsong or calls to encourage a bird to respond in order to see it or photograph it can divert a territorial bird from other important duties, such as feeding its young…It is selfish and shows no respect to the bird.

“People should never use playback to attract a species during its breeding season,” Tony Whitehead, public affairs officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, told the BBC.

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Meanwhile, developers of the apps say the sounds are educational and not a cause for concern.

“Just keep the volume low,” Dr. Hilary Wilson, a developer for the Chirp! app, told the BBC, although she admitted it is possible to misuse them. “We urge great caution — birdsong is simply a pleasant sound to human ears, but to birds it is a powerful means of communication.”

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In England, The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 made it an offense to intentionally disturb nesting birds. Brownsea Island, in the county of Dorset, has put up signs warning visitors about using the apps.

Photo: A yellow oriole sits on a branch. Some ornithologists are concerned that sounds from bird call phone apps may be confusing birds in the wild. Credit: iStockPhoto