New Bird Discovered in India

A new bird species has been found in India, the first time such a discovery has been made here in more than 50 years, an astronomer and keen bird watcher said Tuesday.

The multicolored bird (Bugun liocichla) was spotted in May 2006, in the remote Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh near the border with China, said Ramana Athreya, a member of Mumbai’s Natural History Society.

Athreya, who found the bird, named it after the Bugun tribe, which lives in the area. The bird has a black cap, a bright yellow patch around the eyes and yellow, crimson, black and white patches on the wings, he told The Associated Press.

Birdlife International, a global alliance of conservation organizations, described it on its Web site Tuesday as “the most sensational ornithological discovery in India for more than half a century.”

Athreya caught two of the species, but released them after making detailed notes and taking photographs – and keeping feathers that had worked loose in his net.

“With today’s modern technology, we could gather all the information we needed to confirm it as a new species. We took feathers and photographs and recorded the bird’s songs,” he said.

Though the bird was discovered in May, the news was kept under wraps until it was confirmed that it was a new species.

Athreya said he had first briefly spotted the bird in 1995. “But it was only this year I had a sufficiently good look that we could move into the matter.”

Loren Coleman 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.

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