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First known photos of 'lost bird' captured by scientists
- valiant-comma 3y agoI’ll be honest, a picture of the bird being held by a scientist was not what I expected to see.
- goodcanadian 3y agoThey don't mention it in the article, but the birds were likely captured using mist nets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist_net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist_net). It is a standard technique: In total, about 18 birds were found at three sites during the expedition.
- is_true 3y agoI know nets are cheap, but, why don't use cameras instead?
- lumpa 3y agoThe nets are much more successful in capturing all sorts of birds at once, with little effort, even in environments where you wouldn't get clear line of sight for photos and/or for species that don't sit still for long enough. Handling the birds makes for far better identification (and more detailed pictures too), which is important for places where unknown, hard to identify or hard to detect species are likely to exist. It also allows taking measurements, banding the birds and even collecting tissue samples. So nets are a far better ROI for some scientific projects.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- badgersnake 3y agoThat’s what I’d expect to see if they’d just used an AI to generate the photo though.
- pvaldes 3y agoI had the same impression. Some of the crest points of this bird seem to mutate into background leaves in a part of the photo. The eye lies in a strange place also. That photo is strange. ... But I can be wrong and is really easy to prove it. If they really have captured the bird, they should have taken some genetic material in the process. Entangled birds lose feathers all the time.
- gnatman 3y agoI guess we have to be a little suspicious these days about image provenance but yall sound paranoid. A couple of famous ornithologists are going to take a 6-week expedition and then trash their careers by using DALL-E? If the grip looks weird to you, look at "The Mist Netter’s Bird Safety Handbook". >> The leg hold, or photographer's grip (below), is used to hold birds while photographing them since it maximizes the amount of plumage in view; to transfer them from one bander's hand to another; or to examine features. For this hold, you "scissor" grip the bird's tibia between the fore and middle fingers (or between the ring and middle fingers if your hand is very small) and then clamp the bird's tarsometatarsi between your thumb and fore (or middle) finger. In this hold, the bird is securely gripped above and below the metatarsal joint, which is bent into an "L" shape. The bird will be able to flap its wings and rock backwards and forwards, but it should not be able to rock from side to side. Never hold a bird by the ends of its legs alone — they will break! Place your free hand over the bird's back to keep its wings from flapping until the photographer is ready to shoot. https://www.birdpop.org/docs/pubs/Smith_et_al_1997_Mist_Netters_Bird_Safety_Handbook.pdf https://www.birdpop.org/docs/pubs/Smith_et_al_1997_Mist_Nett... (page 25)
- pvaldes 3y ago> If the grip looks weird to you Nope, The grip is normal. You are replying to other post
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoAt least it wasn't Darwin eating some species he just discovered
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoNot sure why this got down voted. Maybe slightly off-topic (but still this is a rather invasive method of study), but it is true. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/12/430075644/dining-like-darwin-when-scientists-swallow-their-subjects https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/12/430075644/di...
- dhosek 3y agoUsually links to phys.org on this site are to physics articles so I expected the bird to be metaphorical, not literal.
- da39a3ee 3y agoOrnithologists always use mist nets to survey birds. They are very widely used and rarely harm the birds when used by people who've learned how to use them. Their possession is controlled in the sorts of countries with legal systems that specify first world stuff like that.
- dotancohen 3y agoNote that these birds have been lost for only two decades. So this is not some ancient species being recovered.
- rf15 3y agoAlso note that this is likely not a good sign like "Oh, they're not extinct after all!". You may well have found their last survivor and that's it.
- joshuahedlund 3y agoThe article says they found 18 at 3 different sites, in a region of Congo that had been dangerous for the public to visit but had recently become safer. That does not prove a healthy population but it seems a step up from “last survivor”
- zabzonk 3y agoalso says that is "endemic" - if they haven't been seen for years, how do they know that? not a brilliant article, imho.
- da39a3ee 3y agoEndemic to X means that it's geographical distribution is confined to X. The (original) geographical distribution of basically all bird species is fairly well known, due to the efforts of 19th and 20th century scientists and their collection of museum specimens. The reference work here is the "Peters check list", completed over the course of several decades in the 20C by various ornithologists. Of course, you have to check when they say "species" whether they're referring to a subspecies "elevated to species status" by dodgy "phylogeography" genetics studies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_L._Peters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_L._Peters
- fred69 3y agoAnything with a name like "Red-bellied Squeaker Frog" begs for a video clip.
- 5555624 3y agoNot a video; but, a couple of pics: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article285806971.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article2...
- quuxplusone 3y ago[flagged]
- randycupertino 3y agoWhat a cool looking bird! Love the tiny yellow feather plumage around his eye socket.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y ago[stub for offtopicness]
- lofaszvanitt 3y ago[flagged]
- demondemidi 3y agomy first thought was that it might be an AI generated image and someone might have to issue a correction soon. Anecdotal proof AI is continuing the trend of flooding the channels with shit. Or im paranoid.
- da39a3ee 3y ago[flagged]
- folli 3y agoAren't they correlated?
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoApparently forests aren't part of the ecosphere :) Who knew.
- da39a3ee 3y agoA bit, yes. But it's perfectly possible to destroy a bird's breeding habitat without affecting global climate. The focus should be on the species we share the planet with and preventing their extinction. Planetary atmospheric issues are not what nature conservation is about.
- virgildotcodes 3y agoThe point of climate change is precisely that it changes the conditions in virtually all our habitats. The species in those habitats, being largely adapted to their existing range of conditions, may not be able to adapt to those rapidly changing conditions, and as a result large parts of those ecosystems collapse. Just look at any prior major climate change event, for example the Permian extinction, thought to be triggered by major volcanic eruptions causing severe climate change - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_... When you’re talking about something that wipes out 70% of terrestrial vertebrates and 80% of marine species, you can understand how the concept of “preserving biologically diverse habitats” is incompatible.
- rvba 3y agoDid they capture the bird to study it? Or they just made a photo?
- joks 3y agoThere is not a whole lot you can do by capturing a bird and observing it in captivity. My understanding is that the majority of the scientific insight ornithologists are interested in getting from a species like this comes from observing it in the wild, banding it, and/or taking DNA samples.
- fddrdplktrew 3y ago"photoS" Anyone know where to find them?