As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 15 February 2013

A new owl species from Indonesia is formally described


A new species of owl discovered in Lombok, Indonesia, has been formally described by scientists.

The Rinjani Scops owl (Otus jolandae) was discovered by two separate researchers just days apart in September 2003.

The "common" owl is the first endemic bird species recorded on the island of Lombok.

The first study of the species, by an international team of scientists, is published in the journal PLoS One.

Lead researcher George Sangster, from Stockholm University's Department of Zoology in Stockholm, Sweden, described his first encounter with the new species.

"I found the new owl on 3 September 2003, and Ben King found it independently at a different location on 7 September 2003."

"I was on Lombok to collect sound recordings of the local population of a species of nightjar. On the first night I arrived on Lombok, we heard the vocalisations of an owl that [I was] not familiar with."
Coincidentally researcher Ben King, from the Ornithology Department, American Museum of Natural History in New York, USA, was in Lombok at the same time, recording the same nightjar species even though the researchers had never met.

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