Elusive new bird species discovered in China — and you’ll never guess how

Elusive new bird species discovered in China — and you’ll never guess how

The bird is actually quite common in central China, so why did it take researchers so long to track it down -- and how did they do it?

An international team led by a professor from Michigan State University has found a brand new species of bird in China, the university reported in a release recently.

Called the Sichuan bush warbler, it lives in the mountainous region of central China, and its discovery was described in the journal Avian Research. Apparently, the bird was able to hide from biologists by spending most of its time in scrubby vegetation in the remote region for many years, but researchers were able to identify it by a very distinctive song that gave away its location.

The warbler is “exceeding secretive,” Pamela Rasmussen, MSU integrative biologist, said in the report. However, its song, which is described as a “low-pitched drawn-out buzz” and then a click that is repeated in a series. The bird is actually fairly common in central China and thus needs no special protection.

The bird’s song has been posted on the MUS’s Avian Vocalizations Center website where anyone can listen to it. It hosts many bird songs, and you can compare its song to its nearest relative, the Russet bush warbler.

In contrast to the Russet bush warbler, this newest species can be found more often at lower elevations although living in the same region. The Sichuan bush warbler — dubbed Locustella chengi — typically breeds at elevations of up to 7,500 feet.

The warblers also share a lot of genetics as well as the same habitat, with analysis of its DNA showing that they had a common ancestor from as recently as 850,000 years ago, according to the report.

Its scientific name comes from Cheng Tso-hsin, considered one of the greatest orinthologists in China’s history, and he is the founder of the Peking Natural History Museum. He was a prolific research, authoring 140 scientific papers as well as 30 books.

It was truly a global team involved in finding the bird, with researchers from not only the United States and China but also Sweden, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom.

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