New bird discovered in Indonesia

Yahoo News 14 Mar 08;

A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists.

The new species is called the Togian white-eye, or Zosterops somadikartai.

It was first spotted by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia and his colleague Sunarto, who like many Indonesians uses one name.

"We observed the species in the field from 1997 to 2003," Indrawan said in a statement.

Dr. Pamela Rasmussen, a taxonomist at Michigan State University, completed the identification, reported in the March edition of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology.

The researchers had to get one of the birds for examination and formal classification.

Togian white-eyes are small, greenish-colored and have conspicuous white eye-rings.

Its nearest relatives have a band of white feathers around their eyes but this energetic little bird, which travels in small groups, is less showy, the researchers said.

The new Togian white-eye has been seen only near the coasts of three small islands of the Togian Islands in central Sulawesi. Rasmussen said it likely falls into the International Union for Conservation of Nature's category of endangered.

"This finding of the bird is only the beginning given the vast opportunities with Indonesian landscapes and seascapes of endemic flora and fauna," Indrawan said.

"What this discovery highlights is that in some parts of the world there are still virtually unexplored islands where few ornithologists have worked," Rasmussen said. "The world still holds avian surprises for us."

Indonesia has 1,600 of the known 10,000 bird species.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, Editing by Michael Kahn and Jackie Frank)

New bird species found in Togian islands
Antara 14 Mar 08;

Bogor (ANTARA News) - A new bird species named Kacamata Togian or Togian white-eye (Zosterops somadikartai) has been discovered in the Togian Islands, Gulf of Tomini in Central Sulawesi, a University of Indonesia (UI) zoological researcher said.

The species is to be found only in the coastal areas of some of the islands making up the Togian Islands , namely Malenge Island, Batudaka Island and Togian Island, the head of an UI researchers` team, M Indrawan, said here Friday.

Togian white-eye was first found in an expedition in 1996 led by Indrawan and Sunarto, field researchers of the University of Indonesia.

"We observed the species in the field from 1997 to 2003," Indrawan said.

The description of the bird was completed in collaboration with Dr Pamela Rasmussen, a taxonomist specializing in Asian birds from Michigan State University.

Togian white-eyes are small greenish-colored birds which usually also have conspicuous white eye-rings. The birds are very active and travel in small groups.

Indonesia has a number of white-eye or Zosterops species. The Togian white-eye differs from other species most distinctly in that it does not have white eye-rings. It also has red eyes, and soft colors that differ from the colors of other white-eyes.

Unfortunately, when the species began to be noticed by scientists, it was also categorized as an endangered bird based on the cirteria of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), considering its limited number and distribution.

The finding has also established the Togian Islands as an endemic bird area (EBA) under the consensus of BirdLife International that a region with two endemic species automatically becomes an EBA.

Indonesia has 1,598 bird species (not including the recently discovered one) which are mostly to be found in the eastern parts of the country, a senior taxonomist, Prof Somadikarta, said.

There are some 10,000 bird species in the world. Therefore, the finding of a new bird species is always something remarkable, he said. (*)