WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A red-breasted bird discovered by accident in the forests of Gabon is a new species, U.S. scientists said on Friday.

They have named the little bird the olive-backed forest robin, or Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, but say they know little about it yet.

The Smithsonian Institution team found the bird while visiting the forest on a biodiversity project, said Brian Schmidt, a research ornithologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

“I suspected something when I found the first bird in Gabon since it didn’t exactly match any of the species descriptions in the field guides,” Schmidt said in a statement. (more…)

A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists.

The new species is called the Togian white-eye, or Zosterops somadikartai.

It was first spotted by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia and his colleague Sunarto, who like many Indonesians uses one name. (more…)

Scientific name: Actitis macularia

Family: Scolopacidae, Sandpipers

Description: 7 1/2″ (19 cm). A starling-sized shorebird that bobs its tail almost constantly. Breeding adults are brown above, with bold white wing stripe, white below with bold black spots on breast and belly. Fall birds lack black spots below, have brownish smudge at sides of breast.

Habitat: Ponds, streams, and other waterways, both inland and along the shore.

Nesting: 4 buff eggs, spotted with brown, in a nest lined with grass or moss in a slight depression on the ground.

Voice: A clear peet-weet; also a soft trill.

Scientific name: Columba livia

Alternate name: Rock Dove

Family: Columbidae, Pigeons and Doves

Description 13 1/2″ (34 cm). The common pigeon of towns and cities. Chunky, with short rounded tail. Typically bluish-gray with 2 narrow black wing bands and broad black terminal tail band; white rump. There are many color variants, ranging from all white through rusty to all black.

Habitat City parks, suburban gardens, and farmlands.

Nesting 2 white eggs in a crude nest lined with sticks and debris, placed on a window ledge, building, bridge, or cliff.

Voice Soft guttural cooing

Discussion Everyone knows Rock Pigeons, or domestic pigeons, as city birds that subsist on handouts or country birds that nest in pigeon cotes on farms. Few have seen them nesting in their ancestral home-cliff ledges or high among rocks. Over the centuries, many strains and color varieties have been developed in captivity through selective breeding. Since pigeons have been accused of carrying human diseases, there have been several attempts to eradicate them from our cities, but they are so prolific that little progress has been made in this endeavor.

source: enature.com