0:01

The search for birds

0:03

lost to science. How

0:15

researchers are harnessing crowdsource data to

0:17

identify birds that haven't been spotted

0:19

in over a decade. When

0:22

there's more citizen scientists who are out

0:24

there documenting species, they're less likely to

0:26

be lost. It's Tuesday,

0:29

June 25th and you're listening to

0:31

Science Friday. I'm Sci-Fi

0:33

producer Shoshana Bucksbaum. Some

0:36

birds are synonymous with extinction like

0:38

the dodo or the passenger pigeon,

0:41

but how do we prevent species from

0:43

reaching that point? One of the first

0:45

things to do is identify birds that

0:47

are lost to science. These

0:49

are birds that haven't been documented in

0:51

over a decade but just might still

0:53

be out there if we look for

0:55

them. Here's Sci-Fi producer Kathleen

0:58

Davis with more. A

1:00

new study tallies up birds that

1:02

have been lost to science using

1:04

data from citizen scientists all over

1:06

the world. In total, the

1:08

project, called the Search for Lost Birds,

1:11

identified 126 such bird species. So

1:15

joining me now to talk more about

1:18

this is my guest, Dr. John Mittermeyer,

1:20

director of the Search for Lost Birds

1:22

at the American Bird Conservancy. He's

1:25

joining us now from Kampala, Uganda. John,

1:27

welcome to Science Friday. Thanks

1:29

Kathleen, it's great to be here. Walk

1:32

me through what it means for a bird to

1:34

be quote unquote lost to science. For

1:37

us, lost means that there's no independently

1:39

verifiable documentation of the species in the

1:41

last 10 or more years. That's

1:45

photos, audio recordings, genetic material,

1:48

any of that in the last 10 years, if there's no

1:50

records, then it counts as lost. How

1:53

do you compile this list of lost birds? We

1:56

just came out with this paper recently and

1:58

really the innovation of this. paper was exposing

2:01

and describing some of the methodology

2:03

we used to build this list. And

2:05

the way we did it was

2:07

by crowdsourcing it with citizen scientists,

2:09

scientists, ornithologists, conservationists around the world.

2:12

And to start that process, we relied

2:14

heavily on some of these

2:17

big citizen science platforms. Some of the

2:19

listeners may be familiar with iNaturalist, eBird,

2:22

Zeno Kanto is another one. So

2:24

these really impressive, huge databases with

2:27

millions of photographs, millions of sound recordings.

2:29

We started out with those as our

2:31

first step to seeing whether or not

2:33

a species had photos or sound recordings.

2:36

And from there, reached out to experts

2:38

around the world and narrowed it down to come up

2:40

with this final list of 126 species with no documentation.

2:45

So you're in Uganda right now

2:47

working with local birders and community

2:49

members. Can you tell me about

2:52

how local community members,

2:54

what role that they play in locating

2:56

lost birds? Two components to that.

2:58

One is that when there's

3:00

more citizen scientists who are out

3:02

there documenting species, they're less likely

3:04

to be lost. So one of

3:06

the really important aspects of this

3:09

project is collaborating with citizen scientists,

3:11

trying to encourage more people to

3:13

get out there and document birds

3:15

in places like Uganda or even

3:17

United States or Canada, wherever anyone

3:19

may be listening. And then

3:21

the other thing is that this project, as I

3:23

said, is we're using this definition of lost as

3:26

no documentation that's available to the scientific

3:28

community. So in some cases, these species

3:30

might not actually be lost

3:32

to some people, right? There may be people

3:35

living close to the species in the local

3:37

community, or there may even be researchers, scientists

3:39

in a specific region who have data about

3:42

the species, but those knowledge networks just haven't

3:44

been connected. So a

3:46

big part of this project is about trying

3:48

to reach out to people, share data, share

3:50

information, get everyone on the same page. And

3:52

at the same time, find

3:54

ways to build partnerships with citizen scientists

3:57

and researchers who can help us document

3:59

species that... really don't have any documentation.

4:02

Yeah. So of these 126 birds, I mean, where in the world

4:06

are you looking for them? Where are

4:08

they located? Or were they previously located?

4:12

So they're located around the world,

4:14

but there are definitely some clear

4:16

geographic patterns. So one

4:19

of the regions with the most lost

4:21

birds is close to where I am

4:23

now. Central Africa, and particularly the Eastern

4:25

Democratic Republic of Congo, has a number

4:27

of birds that have not been recently

4:30

documented. Another region with a lot

4:32

of species that meet this criteria

4:34

are the islands north of Australia. So that's

4:37

Papua New Guinea and its surrounding islands. There's

4:39

a lot of lost birds there. So you

4:41

have these geographic clusters, but

4:44

you also have species spread around the globe.

4:46

For anyone in the United States, you might

4:48

be familiar with the ivory-billed woodpecker. That's

4:51

a lost bird. That's one of the species

4:53

on our list. There are species in South

4:55

America, the Caribbean, Asia. So they're all over

4:57

the place, but there are these hotspots of

4:59

lost birds. Is

5:02

there a reason that we can identify

5:04

for why these clusters exist? Yes,

5:07

I think there is. And one of the

5:09

biggest reason is lack

5:11

of recent scientific fieldwork, lack

5:13

of attention from the scientific

5:15

community is one aspect of

5:17

it. Also, lack

5:20

of connections between those knowledge networks that I

5:22

mentioned before. So finding ways to connect with

5:24

the people in those regions who might have

5:26

that data, finding ways to foster

5:28

citizen science communities in those regions so

5:30

that the people there can go out

5:32

and find them. I

5:35

think, unsurprisingly, eastern

5:37

Congo and those islands north of

5:39

Australia are places where there are

5:41

not as many people using platforms

5:43

like iNaturalist. So of course, there

5:45

are fewer records that fit into our

5:47

database there. Often, these are places that

5:50

are currently harder to access or have historically

5:53

been inaccessible for a variety of reasons. So

5:55

there's been less fieldwork there. It's often one

5:57

of the things that leads to more lost

5:59

birds in a particular area. Yeah. So

6:02

let's talk about a success story. So once

6:05

you've identified a bird that's been lost to

6:07

science, you plan an expedition, see if you

6:09

can locate it. And one

6:12

of those trips, you successfully found

6:14

a black-naped pheasant pigeon in Papua

6:16

New Guinea. First of

6:18

all, can you describe for our listeners what this bird

6:20

looks like? For those of you thinking

6:22

of pigeons, feral pigeons that you often see in cities,

6:25

this is a totally different beast from

6:27

that. So this is actually, imagine something

6:29

more pheasant-like. This is a large bird,

6:31

pretty good size. It's kind of glossy

6:34

black with this bright blood red eye

6:36

and bill and these sort of orange

6:38

brown wings. And it's got this large

6:40

fan-like tail that it pumps when it

6:42

pumps up and down when it walks.

6:45

So how did you go about finding it? Yeah,

6:48

so the black-naped pheasant pigeon,

6:50

it's known only from Papua New Guinea.

6:52

It's an endemic bird to that country.

6:55

From a scientific perspective, this is going back to when

6:57

we did this project in 2022. At

7:01

that time, it was known only from

7:03

three specimens. So all of those

7:05

collected in the late 19th century. And

7:07

the most recent of those was 1896. So

7:11

as scientists, that's very little to work with.

7:13

Yeah, exactly. Pretty not much

7:15

data. But all of those

7:17

specimens were from a single island. And

7:19

the sort of understanding of this species is

7:22

that it was endemic to that island. So

7:24

we started our project by visiting this

7:27

island. Wanted to go look for

7:29

the bird. We used camera traps.

7:31

This is a terrestrial bird. So we thought camera

7:33

traps was going to be a good way to

7:35

try to document it. But

7:37

also, one of the things that I mentioned, this is

7:39

a large charismatic species. There are a lot of people,

7:41

the people living on this island, were incredibly

7:44

knowledgeable, are incredibly knowledgeable about birds

7:46

and biodiversity. So our main

7:48

strategy for looking for the species

7:50

was reaching out to those people,

7:52

conducting interviews, and asking them whether

7:54

or not they had encountered

7:56

it. So one thing that's

7:59

super interesting to me about this project

8:01

is that you're combining some really

8:03

high-tech analyzation tools, but also, you

8:06

know, you've got this very low-tech way of

8:08

doing this science where you're just on the

8:10

ground asking people questions. So

8:13

how did you eventually come to find that

8:15

this bird was still living? That

8:19

combination of high-tech and more

8:23

low-tech methods is

8:25

a good way of putting it, and

8:27

that's exactly that combo is exactly what

8:29

led to this rediscovery for us. So

8:32

we went around the island interviewing people, asking them

8:35

if they'd seen this bird. Surprisingly,

8:37

many of the people we interviewed, despite knowing

8:39

species on the island really well, said that

8:42

they'd never seen this pheasant pigeon. They'd never

8:44

encountered it. They weren't familiar with it. Until

8:47

finally, in one fairly far-flung,

8:49

remote little community, we found someone who said, yeah, I

8:51

know that bird. I've seen it, and I can take

8:54

you to the exact spot where it is. And

8:56

so we went with him into the forest on

8:58

his family land, and he showed us a couple

9:00

of spots where he said, you know, I saw

9:02

this bird exactly here, and I saw this bird

9:04

exactly there. And we set up

9:07

camera traps at those locations. We also spent time

9:09

walking around in the forest, listening,

9:12

looking, bird-watching, seeing if we could spot this

9:14

species. We didn't find it that

9:17

way, but on our very last

9:19

day, we ended up getting camera trap photos of

9:21

this species at exactly the spot where this local

9:23

man had told us that had seen it. So

9:25

it was that combination of knowledge

9:28

and people there in the spot, telling us exactly where it

9:30

was, and then linking that

9:32

with some camera traps and a more high-tech approach

9:35

that led to success in that case. That's

9:37

so great. I mean, I would imagine that was just

9:39

a huge sigh of relief for you and your team

9:42

to be like, okay, this wasn't all for nothing. We

9:44

did actually find this bird. Absolutely.

9:46

Excitement and relief were the emotions there. You

9:49

know, on the one hand, just this thrill

9:52

we'd been discussing amongst ourselves in

9:54

the days prior to that photograph that we thought there

9:56

was a less than 1% chance we were going

9:59

to find the bird. list

12:01

and they're one of our partners in the

12:03

search for lost birds, specifically BirdLife International, which

12:05

is the the authority on birds

12:07

for the IUC on red list. And so

12:10

we work really closely with them to make

12:12

sure that all our projects provide data that

12:14

can directly feed into this red list that

12:16

can help inform this decision

12:18

of whether or not a species is

12:20

extinct, whether or not it's critically endangered,

12:22

endangered or whatever its conservation

12:24

status is. Support for Science

12:27

Friday comes from the Rita Allen Foundation.

12:29

More at Rita Allen dot org. What

12:32

got you interested in leading this initiative

12:34

to find lost birds? For

12:37

me, this is this is really a lifelong

12:39

passion. You know, I started out birdwatching.

12:41

I was always interested in nature as

12:43

a kid and I started out birdwatching

12:46

around 12 years old. And

12:49

not long after that, I have a

12:51

very distinct memory. I managed to get

12:53

my hands on a big hefty textbook

12:55

of threatened birds of the world

12:57

and I was flipping through it as you

12:59

know any excited kid or enthusiastic

13:02

bird watcher might do. And I

13:04

came across this illustration of a bird called

13:06

the Makira moorhen, which

13:09

was this really cool and interesting looking bird. And

13:11

next to it was this distribution map

13:14

with just a question mark. And

13:16

you know I was used to seeing all

13:18

these other distribution maps of species with various

13:21

shaded colors showing where they occurred and things

13:23

like that. And just the idea that there

13:25

was this big question mark on the map,

13:27

that there was a bird that we

13:29

didn't really know where it was and we couldn't find

13:31

it, completely captured

13:34

my imagination. And I knew from that moment

13:36

that that was a bird I wanted to

13:38

try and find, try and answer that question

13:40

mark, address that, and then also just

13:43

really piqued my interest in this whole theme

13:46

of sort of these mysterious lost birds, these

13:48

species that are, that are these puzzles really,

13:50

that are out there but they're big pieces

13:54

of their distribution, their life history,

13:56

something about them that are still really mysterious

13:58

to us.