Large Pheasant-Like Pigeon Last Seen 140 Years Ago Rediscovered in Papua New Guinea

An expedition to Papua New Guinea captured the first-ever photos and video of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon.

In a world where we hear about extinctions and endangered species all the time, it’s nice to know that animals that were thought to be long gone sometimes make a reappearance.

Take the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, for example, which was first described in the late 19th century and hasn’t been seen for more than 140 years. But now, a team with the Search For Lost Birds caught footage of the bird on Fergusson Island, a rugged island in the D’Entrecasteaux Archipelago off of eastern Papua New Guinea, American Bird Conservancy reports.

The photographs and video taken by the researchers are the first time the bird has been scientifically documented since 1882. Ornithologists know very little about the species, but believe that the population on Fergusson is tiny and decreasing.

The team captured the pheasant-pigeon with a remote camera trap at the end of a month-long search on Fergusson.

“When we collected the camera traps, I figured there was less than a one-percent chance of getting a photo of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon,” said Jordan Boersma, postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University and co-leader of the expedition team. “Then as I was scrolling through the photos, I was stunned by this photo of this bird walking right past our camera.”

“After a month of searching, seeing those first photos of the pheasant-pigeon felt like finding a unicorn,” added John C. Mittermeier, Director of the Lost Birds program at ABC and co-leader of the expedition. “It is the kind of moment you dream about your entire life as a conservationist and birdwatcher.”

The expedition team arrived on Fergusson in early September 2022 and spent a month traveling around the island, interviewing local communities to identify locations where the camera traps could be set up in hope of finding the pheasant-pigeon. The search process proved to be extremely challenging do to the steep, mountainous terrain on Fergusson Island.

“It wasn’t until we reached villages on the western slope of Mt. Kilkerran that we started meeting hunters who had seen and heard the pheasant-pigeon,” said Jason Gregg, conservation biologist and co-leader of the expedition team. “We became more confident about the local name of the bird, which is ‘Auwo,’ and felt like we were getting closer to the core habitat of where the black-naped pheasant-pigeon lives.”

A local hunter finally provided a breakthrough lead on where to find the bird. He told the team he had seen the pheasant-pigeon on multiple occasions in an area with steep ridges and valleys. He also described hearing the bird’s distinctive calls.

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Following the hunter’s advice, the team set up camera traps at the location specified, where they found dense forest. As part of the first-ever camera trapping study conducted on Fergusson Island, a camera placed on a ridge at 3,200 feet (1,000 meters) near the Kwama River above Duda Ununa finally captured the black-naped pheasant-pigeon walking on the forest floor. The team was scheduled to leave the island in just two days.

“When we finally found the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, it was during the final hours of the expedition,” said Doka Nason, the member of the team who set up the camera trap that eventually photographed the lost bird. “When I saw the photos, I was incredibly excited.”

The researchers’ findings suggest that the pheasant-pigeon is likely to be extremely rare. The rugged and inaccessible forest where they rediscovered the species could be the last stronghold for the species on the island, as their habitat is decreasing.