Six birdwatchers have recorded the presence of rare and elusive grey-bellied wren babbler in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district.
Key facts
- They recorded a potentially new species of songbird they named after the Lisu, the local community.
- The team has named the bird Lisu wren babbler.
- Researchers had explored the Mugafi peak in Changlang district in March.
- The grey-bellied wren babbler is mostly found in Myanmar with some birds occurring in adjoining China and Thailand.
- There has been only one previous report of this bird from India when two specimens were collected from Mugafi close to the Myanmar border in 1988.
- One of these specimens is kept at the Smithsonian Museum in the United States.
- Mugafi is 40 km from Vijaynagar, the remotest circle headquarters in Arunachal Pradesh.
- A 157 km road from nearest town Miao, much of it through the Namdapha Tiger Reserve, is yet to be completed.
- Researchers findings were published by Indian BIRDS, a peer reviewed journal of South Asian ornithology.
