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Lost and found: Large-billed Reed-Warbler

Signs of wetland bird last found in 1867 reappear, ornithologists overjoyed

Photo: AFP

RARE FIND: The Large-billed, Reed-Warbler rediscovered in Thailand.

Mumbai: The large-billed reed-warbler has spent most of its existence in anonymity since its discovery in the country in 1867.

But with two of its specimen being found, one ironically in a natural history museum, where it has been since the 19th century, ornithologists, who have sought it for years are finally celebrating.

A single specimen of the bird was first found in the Sutlej vally in Himachal Pradesh in 1867, but its existence at the time had been questioned and many even claimed it was an aberrant version of the more common reed-warblers.

However, decades later on March 21, 2006, an ornithologist found a specimen of the bird at a waste water treatment centre near Bangkok, Thailand.

Philip Round, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Mahidol University, collected two feathers of the bird for DNA analysis and sent the samples to Professor Staffan Bensch of Sweden's Lund University, who incidentally had examined the first specimen that was found in 1867.

The tests confirmed what Round had suspected and the Large-billed Reed-warbler had been found again, 139 years later.

"This remarkable rediscovery gives Indian ornithologists an added incentive to continue our search for the Large-billed Reed-warbler in India," Bombay Natural History Society director Asad Rehmani said.

"Like the discovery of Bugun Liocichla in Arunachal Pradesh in 2006, it (this discovery) shows us how much we still have to learn about our avifauna," he added. However, just when the excitement over the discovery was dying down, another large-billed reed-warbler specimen was discovered but this time in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring, England, in a drawer containing specimen of reed-warblers collected in India in the 19th Century.

Professor Bensch from Sweden was called upon again to identify the species and confirmed the identification of the large-billed reed-warbler using DNA testing.

"Almost nothing is known about this mysterious bird. The Indian specimen has short, round wings and we speculated it is resident or short-distance migrant, so its appearance in Thailand is very surprising.

"A priority now is to find out where the large-billed reed-warbler's main population lives, whether it is threatened, and if so, how these threats can be addressed," Stuart Butchart of BirdLife International, an organisation working for the conservation of birds worldwide, said.

"Now that people are aware large-billed reed-warblers are out there, we can expect someone to discover the breeding grounds before long. Myanmar or Bangladesh are strong possibilities. But this species has proved so elusive that it could produce yet another surprise," Butchart added. - PTI.

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