IT TOOK 100 years, but it was worth the wait. Ornithologists last visited Calayan Island in the Philippines in 1904, when Edward VII was on the British throne and the first baseball World Series had just been played. But a recent expedition has discovered the rarest of things 鈥� a new species of bird.
Four Calayan rails, an almost flightless relative of the moorhen, were sighted in a coconut grove by team member Carmela Espa帽ola. She took photos of the birds, which are mainly dark olive with a white chin and bright red beak and legs. Espa帽ola also recorded their calls, described as 鈥渉oarse staccato ngeck ngeck ngeck鈥� noises and sometimes a trumpeting scream. The team later made more sightings and captured a single female (Forktail, vol 20, p 1).
Some 100 to 200 individuals are thought to live on the island. Although the species is not immediately threatened, things do not bode well for its survival. Of the 20 species or subspecies of rail that have become extinct since 1600, 18 were flightless. The birds are particularly susceptible to introduced predators such as cats, mongooses and snakes.
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