New South American Bird Species Discovered in Old Museum Drawer

A group of tropical passerines adds another member to its ranks (sort of).

Jesse GreenspanPublished Mar 31, 2015

For 70 years, the small brown-and-gray songbirds stashed in a drawer at the Smithsonian were a mystery that no one thought to question. Their labels read White-crowned Tapaculos, a species native to mountain forests across equatorial South America. But as scientists recently discovered, the birds are actually an entirely unique species.

Perija Tapaculo (Scytalopus perijanus) is a
newly identified species found in the humid
 mountains and elfin forests of northwestern
 Venezuela and northern Colombia.
Photo: Andres Cuervo/Flickr Creative Commons

This species, which is named the Perijá Tapaculo, after the mountain range in which it lives, is the newest member of a group of tropical, New World songbirds that forage for insects near the ground. It’s a perilous practice (“tapaculo” essentially means “cover your ass” in Spanish) that leaves them vulnerable to predation. A few species sport bright colors and patterns, but the majority are somber in shade—hence the ambiguity. Of the 50 known species of tapaculos, 10 have been discovered within the last 20 years, thanks to DNA analysis and vocalizations.

“The recognition of the new tapaculo in the Perijás is welcome and exciting news, but it's not totally unexpected,” says Kenn Kaufman, birding expert and Audubon field editor.

The tale of the Perijá Tapaculo’s discovery began in 1941, when ornithologist Melbourne Carriker Jr. collected 27 tapaculo specimens in the Andes on the Colombia-Venezuela border. Carriker sent his bounty to the Smithsonian, where they were recorded as White-crowned Tapaculos, and forgotten. Additional specimens from the area were added to the collection from 1951 to 1978, but they too gathered dust, Jose Avendaño and colleagues report in The Auk: Ornithological Advances.

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