The black-browed bird was described by French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1850. Records of the find are incomplete, but it appears that the bird had been captured on the island of Java. That find was the only proof of its existence.
For the next 170 years, there were no more reports. Was it extinct? That was assumed by most ornithologists.
Last year, a pair of researchers, Muhammad Rizky Fauzan and Muhammad Suranto captured a bird that they could not identify on the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. They took pictures and sent them to their colleagues and released the bird. It soon became clear that his description matched this mystery of ornithology.
It was the same species: a coarse black-browed. The bird was captured in Kalimantan, near the center of the island of Borneo, and its discovery shows that the bird was thought to be extinct because it was looking in the wrong place.
Reference: Missing for 170 years — the rediscovery of black-browed babbler Malacocincla perspicillata on Borneo. BirdingASIA, 34, 13-14.
