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  Yahoo News 7 Mar 07
'Extinct' bird found in Thailand
BANGKOK (AFP) - A small wetland bird believed to have been extinct for more than 130 years has been found in a sewage treatment site in Thailand, an ornithologist said Wednesday.

Philip Round, manager of conservation projects at Mahidol University in Bangkok, said he stumbled across the large-billed reed warbler in March 2006 at the water treatment project in the province of Phetchaburi.

"I was really, really excited. I've known the existence of this bird for many years through reading and old references, but I've never, ever expected to find it here," the British researcher said.

The warbler, which was last seen in northwest India in 1867, was found in grass filter beds used for household sewage treatment on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand.

"When I caught this bird, I knew that something was very different. Its appearance was different from any other Thai reed warblers," Round said, adding the bird stood out because of its long beak and short wings. Weighing just 9.5 grammes (0.3 ounces), the 14-centimetre (5.5-inch) long male bird was believed to be about one year old.

Round took a couple of its tail feathers and sent them to Sweden's Lund University for DNA tests. Within hours, the tests confirmed the bird was the large-billed reed warbler.

Round said the rediscovery of the rare bird after more than a century raised hopes among ornithologists.

"We thought it was probably extinct, but now we have proved that the bird still exists. I believe more researchers will be looking for them in India, Nepal and even Burma," he said, referring to Thailand's neighbour Myanmar.

Round said his findings would be published in the International Journal of Avian Biology.

Yahoo News 8 Mar 07
Wetland bird rediscovered in Thailand
By Michael Casey, AP Environmental Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand - A wetland bird that eluded scientists for nearly 130 years has been rediscovered at a wastewater treatment plant in Thailand, Birdlife International announced Wednesday.

Little is known about the large-billed reed-warbler because it had not been seen since its discovery in 1867 in the Sutlej Valley of India. Because it was so rare, scientists had long debated whether it represented a true species or was an aberrant individual of a more common species.

That debate appears to be settled after Philip Round, an ornithologist at Bangkok's Mahidol University, captured one of the birds on March 27, 2006, at a wastewater treatment center outside Bangkok, the conservation organization in Cambridge, England said.

"Although reed-warblers are generally drab and look very similar, one of the birds I caught that morning struck me as very odd, something about it didn't quite add up," Round said in a statement. He said he noticed the bird's unusually long beak and short wings. "Then, it dawned on me. I was probably holding a large-billed reed-warbler," he said. "I was dumbstruck."

To confirm his findings, Round sent photographs and DNA samples of the bird to Staffan Bensch of Sweden's Lund University, who had previously examined the Indian specimen. Bensch confirmed it represented a valid species.

More evidence that the large-billed reed-warbler was a unique species came to light six months after Round's discovery--tucked away in a museum drawer. A second specimen of the large-billed reed-warbler was found in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring, England, in a drawer of Blyth's reed-warblers collected in India in the 19th century. This one was caught in 1869 in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bensch has since confirmed its identification using DNA.

"Finding one large-billed reed-warbler after 139 years was remarkable. Finding a second right under ornithologists' noses is nothing short of a miracle," BirdLife International's Stuart Butchart said in a statement.

Butchart and other bird experts said the two discoveries have raised the prospect that additional large-billed reed-warblers may be found in Myanmar, Bangladesh or in other parts of Thailand.

"Almost nothing is known about this mysterious bird," Butchart said. "The Indian specimen has short, round wings and we speculated it is resident or a short-distance migrant, so its appearance in Thailand is very surprising," he said. "A priority now is to find out where the large-billed reed-warbler's main population lives, whether it is threatened, and if so, how these threats can be addressed."
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