Itanagar, Dec 11: A trek that they’d undertaken to brave the rains in March to Mugaphi top in Northeastern Arunachal Pradesh on the lookout for grey-bellied wren babbler, an extraordinary songbird, become hard and tiring. But what they discovered and recorded there: a wren babbler with a whitish belly is possibly a new species of the elusive songbird.
Six birdwatchers from Bengaluru, Chennai, and Thiruvananthapuram, at the side of their courses from Arunachal Pradesh, stated they have got came upon a brand new species of Wren Babbler.
“All the birds we discovered sing a candy music that becomes much like the songs of the Naga Wren Babbler; and pretty in contrast to the thrilling music of the Grey-bellied Wren Babbler,” stated Praveen J, one of the contributors from Kerala.
“As the name indicates, the ground color of the belly of Grey-bellied Wren Babbler is grey. However, all of the photographs we were given confirmed birds with whitish bellies. Surprisingly, the unmarried Smithsonian specimen from those mountains additionally had a whitish stomach,” stated Dipu Karuthedathu, any other member of the excursion, hailing from Bengaluru.
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Indian BIRDS, a peer-reviewed magazine of south Asian ornithology, currently posted their findings. Subramanian Sankar (Chennai), Hemraj Duraiswami (Bengaluru), Yolisa Yobin and Rahul Baruah (Arunachal Pradesh) are 4 different contributors to the excursion group.
A declaration with the aid of using the group stated that grey-bellied wren babbler is primarily discovered in Myanmar with a few birds taking place in adjacent China and Thailand. There has been simplest one preceding record of a grey-bellied wren babbler from India while specimens have been accrued from those equal mountains returned in 1988.
One of the specimens is now in the Smithsonian Museum in the United States. It was identified as a grey-bellied wren babbler by the ornithologist Pamela Rasmussen when she included this species in her book published in 2005, they said.
Braving the non-stop rain, the group took a few pictures, and motion pictures and recorded its songs. They came back and analyzed the skins of other Wren Babblers in many museums as well as photographs from other sites.
They attempted to fit their sound with current recordings of grey-bellied wren babblers. They additionally were given images of the unmarried specimen from the Smithsonian Museum.
The plumage in conjunction with the songs does not match any known species. Establishing and naming a species or subspecies scientifically requires genetic material from these birds to be compared against other wren babbler species. However, the team has already given an English name for the bird after the Lisu community, inhabiting the area.
“We believe that the Lisu Wren Babbler may be present in more sites in this mountain range…” said Yolisa Yobin, who has been organizing birding expeditions in Namdapha for the past five years.
