There is not a whole lot you can do by capturing a bird and observing it in captivity. My understanding is that the majority of the scientific insight ornithologists are interested in getting from a species like this comes from observing it in the wild, banding it, and/or taking DNA samples.
They don't mention it in the article, but the birds were likely captured using mist nets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist_net). It is a standard technique:
In total, about 18 birds were found at three sites during the expedition.
The nets are much more successful in capturing all sorts of birds at once, with little effort, even in environments where you wouldn't get clear line of sight for photos and/or for species that don't sit still for long enough.
Handling the birds makes for far better identification (and more detailed pictures too), which is important for places where unknown, hard to identify or hard to detect species are likely to exist. It also allows taking measurements, banding the birds and even collecting tissue samples. So nets are a far better ROI for some scientific projects.
Ornithologists always use mist nets to survey birds. They are very widely used and rarely harm the birds when used by people who've learned how to use them. Their possession is controlled in the sorts of countries with legal systems that specify first world stuff like that.
I had the same impression. Some of the crest points of this bird seem to mutate into background leaves in a part of the photo. The eye lies in a strange place also. That photo is strange.
... But I can be wrong and is really easy to prove it.
If they really have captured the bird, they should have taken some genetic material in the process. Entangled birds lose feathers all the time.
I guess we have to be a little suspicious these days about image provenance but yall sound paranoid. A couple of famous ornithologists are going to take a 6-week expedition and then trash their careers by using DALL-E? If the grip looks weird to you, look at "The Mist Netter’s Bird Safety Handbook".
>> The leg hold, or photographer's grip (below), is used to hold birds while photographing them since it maximizes the amount of plumage in view; to transfer them from one bander's hand to another; or to examine features. For this hold, you "scissor" grip the bird's tibia between the fore and middle fingers (or between the ring and middle fingers if your hand is very small) and then clamp the bird's tarsometatarsi between your thumb and fore (or middle) finger. In this hold, the bird is securely gripped above and below the metatarsal joint, which is bent into an "L" shape. The bird will be able to flap its wings and rock backwards and forwards, but it should not be able to rock from side to side. Never hold a bird by the ends of its legs alone — they will break! Place your free hand over the bird's back to keep its wings from flapping until the photographer is ready to shoot.
my first thought was that it might be an AI generated image and someone might have to issue a correction soon. Anecdotal proof AI is continuing the trend of flooding the channels with shit. Or im paranoid.
The point of climate change is precisely that it changes the conditions in virtually all our habitats. The species in those habitats, being largely adapted to their existing range of conditions, may not be able to adapt to those rapidly changing conditions, and as a result large parts of those ecosystems collapse.
When you’re talking about something that wipes out 70% of terrestrial vertebrates and 80% of marine species, you can understand how the concept of “preserving biologically diverse habitats” is incompatible.
Not long ago I did a story about the Appalachian salamander which is a threatened species within its range. It lives in the higher elevations of the Smokey and Appalachian mountains. As the climate warms, these salamanders are moving up slope to adapt. But now they are out of elevation. They are already inhabiting the top of the forested mountains and have nowhere else to go if warming trends continue.
The obsession with climate change has produced a generation who think that any tree species is ok if it replenishes carbon. People who don't understand that some natural habitats are incomparably more important for birds than secondary forest and reforestation efforts.
Why does it matter if other birds can adapt? We got lots of different types of birds. It's awesome. Maybe we'll get new types of birds! Why does "this particular variation is going extinct" matter?
This is so bizarrely flippant. We are seeing massive declines in bird populations. It is not just a matter of a few variations going extinct and new types of birds magically appearing within our lifetimes.
Nice try but that argument doesn't work: predicted speed of change to planet under climate change is much much greater than under previously seen natural changes to habitats.
Yeah so? I think you're suffering from geneticism. The idea that we only change through inherited traits and mutations over geological time periods is ancient nonsense compared to what we know about epigenetics now.
The irony is Jean Baptiste Lamarck had it closer than anyone. Animals genetically adapt to new environments in their own lifetimes and that includes making changes to the DNA.
We can also help them to adapt.
The idea that this is dismissive of the problem is nonsense. It's the solution.
Actually, no, I have a PhD, and postdoc in this area. You, on the other hand, have read too much pop science about epigenetics. Surely you know that what sells pop science is novelty, so claiming that "Darwin was wrong because epigenetics" is a great commercial strategy. Sounds like it worked on you?
A bit, yes. But it's perfectly possible to destroy a bird's breeding habitat without affecting global climate. The focus should be on the species we share the planet with and preventing their extinction. Planetary atmospheric issues are not what nature conservation is about.
Endemic to X means that it's geographical distribution is confined to X. The (original) geographical distribution of basically all bird species is fairly well known, due to the efforts of 19th and 20th century scientists and their collection of museum specimens. The reference work here is the "Peters check list", completed over the course of several decades in the 20C by various ornithologists.
Of course, you have to check when they say "species" whether they're referring to a subspecies "elevated to species status" by dodgy "phylogeography" genetics studies.
The article says they found 18 at 3 different sites, in a region of Congo that had been dangerous for the public to visit but had recently become safer. That does not prove a healthy population but it seems a step up from “last survivor”
