An elusive, exotic species of spectacularly-colored pigeon has been caught on video camera for the first time after having remained unseen and undocumented by scientists for the last 140 years. This recording was followed up by an expedition and a human-to-bird close encounter of a lifetime.
Last fall, a team of researchers and conservationists set out for Papua New Guinea in search of the ultra-rare black-naped pheasant pigeon. This large, ground-dwelling pigeon lives only on Fergusson Island in the D'Entrecasteaux Archipelago and was first found and cataloged by scientists in 1882.
The expedition—a collaboration between American Bird Conservancy, Search for Lost Birds, BirdLife International, and Re:wild—marked the first study of its kind conducted on Fergusson Island. They used remote camera traps to capture photos and video of the pheasant pigeon in early October, before delving into the forest during their month-long visit to the island.
The expedition was headed by director of the Lost Birds program, John C. Mittermeier. “Seeing those first photos of the pheasant pigeon felt like finding a unicorn,” he said. “It is the kind of moment you dream about your entire life as a conservationist and birdwatcher.”
The black-naped pheasant pigeon is so called for its unique pigmentation and resemblance to the common pheasant with its broad flat tail, large size, and clumsy flight. While little is known about the species, ornithologists believe their numbers are shrinking.
For several members of the search, this wasn’t their first jaunt to Fergusson Island. Team members Boermsa, Doka Nason (who set up the camera traps), and expedition co-leader Jason Gregg (a conservation biologist) embarked on a two-week scouting survey in 2019 to determine the most likely spots where sightings would occur.
Then in 2022, collaborating with island locals and Papua New Guinea’s National Museum, searchers spent a challenging four weeks taking the measure of the mountainous island, interviewing communities, and gathering as much information as they could about the elusive avian.
As it turned out, while scientists at large hadn’t seen the bird since 1882, local hunters had. Upon reaching villages on the western slope of Mt. Kilkerran, Fergusson’s highest mountain, the team met hunters who had both heard and seen the exotic pigeon.
“We became more confident about the local name of the bird, which is ‘Auwo,’ and felt like we were getting closer to the core habitat of where the black-naped pheasant pigeon lives,” Gregg said.
Hunter Augustin Gregory, of Duda Ununa village, helped pinpoint the best locations for the camera traps after telling the team where he had spotted the bird with his own eyes. The search party correspondingly placed 12 camera traps along the mountain’s steep slopes and in dense forest and placed 8 more in spots pinpointed by other hunters.
It was a camera mounted on a rugged 3,200-foot ridge, near the Kwama River above Gregory’s village, that finally sighted the black-naped pheasant pigeon wandering past. The sighting was just as rare and difficult to obtain as the team had anticipated.
“The fact that many of the people we interviewed had never seen or heard of the pheasant pigeon really highlights how elusive this bird is, and suggests that it could be extremely sensitive to human disturbance,” team member Cosmo Le Breton, a research assistant from Oxford University, said.
The island communities were “very excited” with the rediscovery since many had neither seen nor heard of the bird until the team set foot on Fergusson Island, according to Papua New Guinea-based conservationist Serena Ketaloya. She added that those communities are “now looking forward to working with us to try to protect the pheasant pigeon.”
Detailed information collected by the team has also “provided a basis for conservation of this extremely rare bird,” Roger Safford, senior program manager of Preventing Extinctions at BirdLife International, said.
The pheasant pigeon’s rediscovery was hailed by Christina Biggs, manager of the Search for Lost Species project at Re:wild, as “an incredible beacon of hope for other birds that have been lost for a half-century or more.”
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