Myanmar’s Jerdon’s babbler had not been seen since 1941. PHOTO/ROBERT TIZARD
The story this week of how a little bird called the Jerdon’s babbler was sighted in Myanmar for the first time since the 1940s captivated readers. The New York Times said in its editorial page that there is something ‘curiously delightful in learning that a chirpy little creature we thought we had crowded off the face of the earth is still among us’. So Coconuts Yangon asked the man who helped find the bird – after hearing its distinctive ‘Chi-chi-chi-chew-chew-chew, tew-tew-tew-tew chew’ call near where it was last spotted, in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta – to recount how his team did it and what the discovery means. Without further adieu, here’s Robert Tizard, of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The experience was quite a surprise. It was late afternoon, and we were looking for somewhere to set up mist nets for the following morning. We had already spent four days searching further east, close to where the bird was last seen, in 1941. One of our team, Frank Rheindt, started playing a tape of the bird’s call as we were walking along. We were still chatting as the tape played and then suddenly Frank stopped talking and looked up. We could hear the bird calling from deep within the grass.
I thought it must be a more common species making the sound. We played the tape and waited patiently until the bird appeared. It was quite shy at first, but eventually came quite close and showed off. The realization that this was actually a Jerdon’s babbler took a while to sink in. We immediately started making plans for the next morning to try to capture the bird and get a blood sample. Then we visited a local house and bought a big fish for our celebratory dinner.
At the moment there is no plan to do something radical like try to reintroduce the birds through captive breeding. The Ayeyarwaddy Delta, where the bird was found, is a very large area so we think more habitat is out there to be found. We need further study to understand how small habitat fragments – native grass remnants found in between rice fields – can be to still support viable populations of the bird.
The good news is that these birds were found in areas that had been planted with rice previously but had been abandoned, so native vegetation had already returned. If these birds are able to quickly colonize new areas of habitat, this may make them more resilient to habitat changes as long as suitable habitat remains in some areas.
