Mokokchung, December 9 (MTNews): An expedition team of bird-watchers from Bengaluru, Chennai, and Thiruvananthapuram, along with two guides from Arunachal Pradesh, discovered a potentially new species of Wren Babbler in Arunachal Pradesh, which they named the Lisu Warren Babbler.
The birding team first arrived in Vijoynagar, a village in the Lisu community about 82 kilometres from Miao, and drove through treacherous mountain roads and through the famous Namdapha national park.
It was a two-day climb in the Himalaya from Vijoynagar to the altitudes where the Grey-bellied Wren Babblers were thought to live. The team, however, was in for a nasty-pleasant surprise: while they did see what they thought were Grey-bellied Wren Babblers, the birds did not sing like them!
“All the birds we found had a sweet song that was similar to the songs of the Naga Wren Babbler; and quite unlike the trilling song of the Grey-bellied Wren Babbler”, says Praveen J, one of the members of the expedition.
They set out in March of this year to climb the Mugaphi peak in north-eastern Arunachal Pradesh in search of the elusive Grey-bellied Wren Babbler. They did, however, return with something more exciting – documentation of something new to science.
Indian BIRDS, a peer-reviewed journal of South Asian ornithology, published their findings.