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.
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.