When Pia Sethi accompanied her friend Nitu Sethi to Great Nicobar this summer, she was hoping to get a glimpse of some of the island’s rare and endemic bird species. Nitu, an avid birdwatcher, maintained what is referred to as a “life list”, of all the species that a birder sees in their lifetime. The two hoped to add some names to Nitu’s list on their trip.
What they were not expecting was to chance upon a bird new to science.
On a May evening, Pia and Nitu were in a forest in Campbell Bay, looking for the slaty-legged crake, an orange-headed bird with black and white stripes on its belly. Suddenly, they heard a bird call that they could not identify – they did not manage to find the source of the call.
Pia, who is an ecologist and a senior fellow at the Centre for Ecology Development and Research, in Dehradun, remembered that she had read about the possibility that the island housed another species of crake, as yet unconfirmed. Excited by the prospect of spotting it, the duo along with Vikram Shill, a bird tour guide from Port Blair, returned to the site the next morning. As they walked around, they saw...
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