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| Large-billed Reed Warbler Acrocephalus orinus
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| Photographer : | © P. D. Round/The Wetland Trust |
| Location : | Laem Phak Bia, Ban Laem District, Phetchaburi, Thailand |
| Date : |
27 March 2006 |
| Equipment : | |
| Alt. Common Name : | Hume's Reed Warbler |
| Bird Family : | Acrocephalinae - Tesias, stubtails, warblers, tailorbirds & allies |
| Bird Group : | PASSERIFORMES |
| Red Data Status : | Data Deficient » more details |
| Remarks : | These are photos of one of the world's least-known birds. A specimen taken in India 139 years previously was the only known individual of this species until Philip Round mistnetted this bird at a wastewater treatment centre near Bangkok.
Note the following features: an entirely unstreaked Acrocephalus with warm olive-brown upperparts, slightly paler edges to the greater coverts, tertials and inner secondaries, long large bill with entirely pale (fleshy pink) lower mandible and blackish upper mandible, short whitish supercilium ending at the back of the eye, whitish crescent below the eye, short blackish line behind and before the eye not extending onto the lores, whitish underparts washed with buff on breast, flanks and undertail coverts, short wings (short primary projection approximately one third the length of the visible tertials and six primary tips visible) making the tail appear relatively long, brownish-grey legs. |
| Taxonomic Notes : | Originally described from a single specimen collected in the Sutlej Valley near Rampoor, Himachal Pradesh, India in 1867, this species was long the subject of various theories as to whether it was a separate species or simply a hybrid or variant of some other species. However, a thorough investigation of the only known specimen carried out in 2002 proved that it was indeed a separate species based on its morphology and mitochondrial DNA.
Since then the first ever live specimen has been trapped in March 2006 in Thailand, and another specimen (collected in October 1869 at Mussourie, Uttarakhand, India) has been discovered among the collection of Blyth's Reed Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum skins at the Natural History Museum at Tring in the UK.
Refs:
Bensch, S. and Pearson, D. (2002) The Large-billed Reed Warbler Acrocephalus orinus revisited. Ibis 144: 259-267.
Philip D. Round, Bengt Hansson, David J. Pearson, Peter R. Kennerley, Staffan Bensch. (2007) Lost and found: the enigmatic large-billed reed warbler Acrocephalus orinus rediscovered after 139 years. Journal of Avian Biology 38:2 133 |
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