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New Bird Species Found in Colombia

Two new bird species called tapaculos have been identified in the Cordillera Central Mountains of Colombia, a conservation group announced recently.

The shy, dark-colored birds, which live in thick forest, are mostly identified by their songs, and it was their calls that distinguished the two new species, BirdLife International reports.

The existence of the tiny bird, named the upper Magdalena tapaculo or scytalopus rodriguezi, has been suspected since the 1980s.

Political instability made it difficult to visit the areas where the birds are found, said Paul Salaman of Bogota-based Fundacion ProAves, who helped discover one of the new species.

"It was frustrating, waiting for years knowing there were new species to be discovered and protected,” says Paul Salaman of Fundación ProAves, one of the expedition members. "Then we learned it was safe to visit the Finca Merenberg Mountains and soon found the new species in the dense understory of primary forest. In appearance it's very like other scytalopus tapaculos, but it has a distinctive voice.”

The other new species is called Stiles' tapaculo, or scytalopus stilesi.

Niels Krabbe of the Zoological Museum at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and colleagues first suspected this bird was a new species when listening to recordings of their songs.

"The Stiles' tapaculo's song is considerably faster and lower-pitched than that of the closely related Ecuadorian tapaculo S. robbinsi," BirdLife International said in a statement.

It is genetically distinct and is found throughout a 185-mile stretch of the Cordillera Central Mountains.

Currently the upper Magdalena tapaculo is known from two localities on the east slope of the Cordillera Central at approximately 2165 to 2500 feet. The species’ presumed area of occupancy is heavily deforested and its remaining suitable forest habitat may cover 105 square miles or less. One of the locations, Merenberg Reserve, was Colombia’s first private protected area, but the site is known to be rapidly deteriorating through selective logging.

Tapaculos are generally dark colored and skulk in thick forest undergrowth, making them difficult to study in the field. They have subtle plumage variations, some of them age-related, although there is much individual variation, as well as differences between species. Some taxonomists regard scytalopus tapaculos as the most complicated of all neotropical species. Voice is the most important aid to their identification, and study of birds in the northern Andes has already led to the description of three new species, and the elevation of several former subspecies to specific level in Ecuador.