New Bird Species Found in Central Peru

A graduate student from Kansas University has found a new bird species in central Peru.

Peter Hosner, a graduate from the Kansas University and a team has published a study describing a new bird species called Junin Tapaculo. The bird was found in the remote Andes Mountains of central Peru.

(Photo : University of Kansas)

The tapaculos (ta-pa-COO-lo) are a group of birds found in South and Central America. Highest diversity of the group was found in the Andean region. These birds have short wings and long legs with string feet that they use to scratch the ground. They are brown or gray in color. The birds are mostly identified by their loud ventriloquial calls. When approached, they stick up their tails and scurry for cover.

"We found the Junin Tapaculo in the field by its distinctive voice," Hosner, a doctoral student of ecology and evolutionary biology at KU said in a news release. "I'd spent a lot of time traveling and working with birds in the Andes before I enrolled at KU, and I had never heard anything like it before. We made voice recordings and collected specimens that are needed in all scientific species descriptions. Tapaculos are extremely difficult to identify, so at this point we weren't sure if it was a new species, or if we just happened to record a rarely given vocalization by an already described species."

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