JAKARTA: A bird first reported spotted on the remote Indonesian island of Togian in 1996 has been declared a newly discovered species, a top taxonomist in the Southeast Asian country said on Saturday.
The Togian white-eye or Zosterops somadikartai is named after taxonomist Soekarja Somadikarta and is being introduced in this month’s edition of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, according to a news release from Indonesia’s Institute of Science.
Somadikarta said his colleague, Mochamad Indrawan, first spotted the small bird with green plumage and a band of red feathers around each eye in 1996.
The pair spent years collaborating with well-known Asian bird specialist Pamela Rasmussen of Michigan State University to identify it as a new species.
The red-beaked bird is found only near the coasts of three small islands off Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province, Somadikarta said.
He said its habitat is less than 5,000 square kilometres.
“We think it’s endangered,” he said. “It is very active and moves in small flocks.”.—AP
