New Bird Species: Borneo
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 14th, 2010
The Oriental Bird Club’s journal BirdingASIA has announced the discovery of a new species of bird in the rainforests of Borneo.
The discoverer is Leeds University biologist Richard Webster and the bird (shown above) is the spectacled flowerpecker. The new species is a tiny, wren-sized, gray bird with white markings around its breast, belly, and eyes, but it has not yet been given a scientific name. Dr David Edwards, a tropical ecologist at the University of Leeds, identified the bird as a new species from photographs.
It was seen eating mistletoe on a tree in the Danum Valley Conservation Area in Sabah, Malaysia.
“The discovery of a new bird species in the heart of Borneo underlines the incredible diversity of this remarkable area,” said Adam Tomasek, leader of WWF’s Heart of Borneo initiative, told the BBC News.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Nice. New species are being discovered everyday. I really think it gives Cryptozoology more credit that the discovery rate is going uphill and not the other way. Hopefully soon we will be more readily accepted as legitimate and not scoffed at and called pseudoscience anymore. I think if cryptozoological expeditions were better funded we may have better results as well, obviously there’s more to it than that but it does have a good deal of bearing on it since better funding means better equipment and longer trips, as well as more staff to help.
for me , this is what it’s all about , Richard Webster is to be commended for keeping his eyes and mind open , congratulations to Richard.Job well done.
My congratulations also to Webster. Great discovery.