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Undescribed (1 Viewer)

I've read something on the ornithomedia site but I can't fully understand what is written there.

Not much is said about the piculet: three specimens were collected in two different sites (heard in others) which looked different from all known Picumnus. The autors are currently studying these birds to eventually confirm whether it is a new taxon or not.
 
A big thank you to all who responded and provided valuable insight.

I am well aware of the secrecy surrounding some of these discoveries (not only to avoid an honour theft, but also supposedly to better protect the area), I am hence not going to look for info about them, but as there are many discoveries being unveiled, I find it interesting to remain updated on their development (especially the taxa I saw of course, but not only that).

I was with Bret Whitney in Sept 2006 when we saw what he said could have been the “Allpahuayo Hawk” in the Jaú National Park (Brazil - Amazonas), but unfortunately Bret was the one who did not see it well enough to confirm. He however made no secret about the prior sightings of this hawk in Peru and Brazil (I do not know more as I haven’t read Amaral's article yet).

And we did see with him other non described taxa such as the “Island Streaked Flycatcher”, similar to Myiodynastes maculatus, but with a different voice and only found on the Solimoes/Amazon islands or the “Jau Tody-Tyrant” with a song different from other Hemitriccus. I would also welcome any progress on the description of these birds.

I actually have many others to deal with, but I think I will post about them later with one thread per species or family to shorten the messages and not mix everything.

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Daniel
 
And we did see with him other non described taxa such as the “Island Streaked Flycatcher”, similar to Myiodynastes maculatus, but with a different voice and only found on the Solimoes/Amazon islands or the “Jau Tody-Tyrant” with a song different from other Hemitriccus. I would also welcome any progress on the description of these birds.

Both are - supposedly - in progress, but the involved people are quite busy with other things, too. Interesting recordings of a Hemitriccus have also been made in north-eastern Peru.

Not much is said about the piculet: three specimens were collected in two different sites (heard in others) which looked different from all known Picumnus. The autors are currently studying these birds to eventually confirm whether it is a new taxon or not.

... and you can be certain that's a genus they'll be careful with before describing anything. To quote J.V. Remsen:

"Species-level taxonomy in the genus Picumnus is in need of major re-evaluation; interbreeding, to varying degrees, between various pairs of parapatric and partially sympatric species is inordinately high."

Knowing who are involved, that's not something I'd worry about, though (cf. recent work by some of the same people on the likely hybrid, P. corumbanus). On a somewhat related issue, Tocantins is a very interesting state (with more than a Picmnus worth keeping an eye on) - long overlooked by ornithologists & birders alike.
 
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It’s actually just a follow up of Hidde’s previous comments:

I guess everybody knows about the Kolombangra Rail, a close relative of the Roviana Rail.

So the Roviana Rails on Kolombangra would be different from those on New Georgia and Rendova ? I am unaware of this finding and haven’t found anything on the net … Who said that ?


...the other is from Choiseul. The last has been seen by only a very few people, H.Hamlin of the Whitney South Seas Expeditions was the first and our friend Jared Diamond was another.

Hidde, do you happen to know when was the "Choiseul Rail" last seen ?

Are there other Rallidae elsewhere still waiting for a description ?

Daniel
 
The Kolombangara rail was first heard of but not seen by Diamond in either 1974 or 1976. It was described by locals as similar to the Roviana Rail, which Diamond was going to scientifically describe in 1991, and they named it "keremete" after its call. The bird was later seen by Brian Finch but I don't know any details of that sighting. It was seen again by David Gibbs in 1994 and well enough to notice that it was quite different from the Roviana Rail. Gibbs includes a pen drawing in his article (Bull. Brit.Orn.Club Vol. 116, no 1, P. 20), which was reproduced in Taylor's book on the rails of the world.
Diamond's sighting of the Choiseul rail in the seventies may very well have been the last one. I don't know of any more recent.
Two more undescribed subspecies of rails spring to my mind: one is the Foja rail which probably belongs to Mayr's Forest-rail (Rallina mayri) and the other is a race of the Barred Rail (Gallirallus torquatus) from southern Sulawesi.
 
I just come to think of two possibly undescribed birds on New Guinea.

One is a possibly new subspecies of the Island Trush Turdus poliocephalus from mainland Papua New Guinea; there is four described subspecies found on the mainland New Guinea (and several additional on close by Islands), in April 1987 Tim Flannery and Lester Seri collected three individuals of the Island Thrush at 3200m in the Star Mountains (Papua New Guinea side), the first records of the Island Thrush from this mountain range and they were initially believed to belong to the versteegi subspecies (found in the Snow Mts in West Papua).

But some differences in measurements in the specimens collected by Flannery and Seri raise some questions if this could not be a undescribed subspecies, the source I have read about it in a article from 1995 and I have not read anything about it since.

May have been included in some more recent pappers and maybe even confirmed as only a sub-population of Turdus poliocephalus versteegi, if anyone could shed any light on this I would be happy.

The other is a rail from New Britain, in the Bismarck Archipelago, published in the Muruk Journal, possibly belongs to the Ralliana genus, being a member of the forest-rail was ruled out, first seen in the earlly 1990s I believe.
 
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It would make sense if the PNG Star Mountain birds are "versteegi" because that form lives just over the border in the western Stars and much further west into the Snow Mountains. There are other birds with the same kind of distribution that show a similar clinal variation in size without actually breaking up in different subspecies. The Black Sicklebill is one of them. The thrush possibly lives up to the Strickland Gorge which is a barrier for several species and subspecies that live in the central mountain chain. On the eastern side of the valley lives "carbonarius".
There are at least three other undescribed races of the Island Thrush mentioned in literature: two in Sulawesi and one in the Nakanai Mountains of New Britain.
Which brings us to the Rallina seen on that island. Very interesting because a Rallina had not been found there before. However, the Red-necked Crake (R. tricolor) lives all around New Britain, including New Ireland, but even in the places where it is known to occur it is seldom seen. So this bird would make a strong candidate to eventually turn up on New Britain.
 
I only know of two parakeets that might be as yet non-described species, based on:

http://www.birding-peru.com/masterperu/default.asp?paginaactual=5

Any further insight on these taxa ?

The one he refers to as the "Southern Wavy-breasted Parakeet" may indeed be a new taxon, but that is essentially based on its distribution rather than any confirmed differences in plumage or genetics. The "Yurimaguas Painted Parakeet" could be a new taxon, or just a hybrid. It is, btw, feature in several books, as it was considered typical lucianii until Joseph, 2002, was published. While that paper did solve a few issues in regards of taxon limits, he was overly optimistic in regards of species (any paper that results in nothing but monotypic species should be double-checked by anyone considering the BSC the standard). This is pretty evident when reading Ribas et al., 2006, where it was suggested that several species split by Joseph in 2002 should be re-lumped. This, among others, involve peruviana and roseifrons, thus greatly diminishing the chance that Southern Wavy-breasted Parakeet actually should be a new species (while the chance of it being a new ssp. remains unchanged). The taxon lucianii wasn't sampled in the newer paper, but I'd be unsurprised if it belonged with peruviana and roseifrons, thereby also greatly diminishing the chance that the "Yurimaguas Painted Parakeet" represents a new species.

Anything else in this family ?

If just looking at ssp's then there are unresolved populations within the Amazona ochrocephala complex (see Eberhard and Bermingham, 2004), and A. aestiva complex (see Areta, 2007). Regarding the latter, however, I'd add that the variation within A. aestiva is far more complex than generally described, and I really wouldn't be surprised if it was better considered a highly variable - but monotypic - species. This is further confused by aviculture, where two main types are considered representative for the two described subspecies, but, as a fast google search reveals, a fair percentage of those referred to as xanthopteryx have a massive yellow shoulder that is rather unrepresentative of "true" xanthopteryx. Additionally, variation in facial pattern has been underestimated, not only in Argentina (as dealt with in Areta, 2007), but also in Brazil, though in fairness it should be added that some of this could be age-related. The fact that escapees are rather frequent even within its range, and some of the escapees have managed to establish populations e.g. in parts of Brazil, doesn't exactly help when trying to establish the nature of the intraspecific variations. Some uncertainty also exists regarding the Aratinga pertinax discovered a few years ago along the Rio Solimões in far western Brazil, and the possibility that they represent an undescribed subspecies remains.
 
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Undescribed owls

With the many explanations especially by Rasmus (to whom many thanks again for his last detailed contribution on the Neotropical parrots), and the recent naming of the Santa Marta Screech-Owl http://www.abcbirds.org/conservationissues/species/discovered/screechowl.html , I could refine my list. I have as a result further requests ;)

I wonder whether we have recent news of:

The “Streseman’s Scops-Owl Otus stresemanni” which was considered a pale morph of O. spilocephalus vandewateri by Koenig et al. (1999), but is under review by the Birdlife Taxonomic Working Group.

The “Small Island Scops-Owl” seen in 1975 on Perak Island in the Malacca Strait (Wells, D. 1999 - The Birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsula: 416.)

The “Togian Scops-Owl” on the Togian Islands in Sulawesi (Mochamad Indrawan et al., 2006 - Forktail 22: 12)

The “Talaud Island Owl » also found in Sulawesi.

Daniel
 
I can only add another unknown Otus to your list. The one from Principe. I've read that someone has received a grant in order to look for this bird together with the other rarities living in the mountain forests of that island. So we'll have to wait and see what the results will bring.
 
Undescribed Nightjars

I only know 3:

“East Cuban Poorwill” Siphonorhis sp. There was a comment on this site:
http://folk.uio.no/csteel/nof/dokumenter/nytt/dok/birdwatchingfair2000.htm but the address does not seem to work anymore.

“Bamenda Nightjar” Caprimulgus sp. See: http://worldtwitch.com/new_species_hornbuckle.htm

“Whitney’s Nighthawk” Nyctiprogne (leucopyga?). Bret Whitney & Mario Cohn-Haft found this bird in the Jau National Park close to Manaus. It is rather common in some places, very similar to the Band-tailed Nighthawk, but the call is completely different.

Do you happen to know more ?

Daniel
 
“Whitney’s Nighthawk” Nyctiprogne (leucopyga?). Bret Whitney & Mario Cohn-Haft found this bird in the Jau National Park close to Manaus. It is rather common in some places, very similar to the Band-tailed Nighthawk, but the call is completely different.

Note differences in voices of already described taxa, as correctly described in the new field guide to Peru. Furthermore, the "new" population may already have a name, latifasciata, long since abandoned, but possibly applicable in this case. So, there can be few doubts that we're looking at more than one species, but it is questionable if any of these represent truly new taxa. There are people looking into this.
 
"The “Vanikoro White-eye” found by Gibbs in 1994."

This will be described by Guy Dutson later this year in Ibis.
 
Great news ! Guy is doing some fine work in the Solomons.
I know of two other undescribed Zosterops in Indonesia. One seen and collected on the Togian Islands (see Forktail 22, P. 16) and another one seen on Buton, I think. But I couldn't find the reference to the latter bird anymore. I thought it was mentioned in an article of the Forktail as well but now I'm not so sure.
As far as nightjars are concerned I remember one possible undescribed taxon found on the Arabian Peninsula some years ago, mentioned in the Bull. British Ornithologists' Club.
 
Undescribed nightjars

Note differences in voices of already described taxa, as correctly described in the new field guide to Peru.

OK, I looked into Cleere 1998, HBW5 1999, Holyoak 2001, Hilty 2003, Restall 2006 and Schulenberg et al. 2007 (new field guide to Peru).

It seems that 2 different types of voice have been recorded.

Depending on the authors, the first type is : glok, glok, glok or gole kwak or gole-kwoik kwak or churk… churk… churk or even qurk – ta – ta – ta – ta – ta …

The second is : tooi-wi, tuu (Holyoak) or chew, CHEEwunk-WHEEoo (Schulenberg).


Furthermore, the "new" population may already have a name, latifasciata, long since abandoned, but possibly applicable in this case.

Do you mean that leucopyga and latifasciata could be sympatric in North-western Brazil (and may be also in North-eastern Peru) and the second type of voice being the one of the latter ?

Daniel
 

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