Ten years ago, deep in the Borneo rainforest, a new species of bird was spotted feeding on berries from one of the local mistletoe species. Small, grey but quite pretty it was given the name Spectacled Flowerpecker – but not, at the time, a formal scientific name because that needs formal examination and description – which means a bird in the hand, not in the bush.
The preliminary announcements about it in 2010 hailed it as a perfect example of how little we still know about the species of our planet and how diverse biodiversity actually is.
Fast-forward 10 years, to 2019, and this little bird still hadn’t been formally described and named. Primarily because it is so small, just 2 inches tall, and is so difficult to spot, let alone capture. It feeds largely in the forest canopy up amongst the mistletoe plants whose berries it eats – most sightings have been from the forest walkways erected in the canopy as a new form of ecotourism. Click here for a blog describing some 2017 sightings. An account on the Audubon website describes the difficulties in documenting it.
This year, 2019, a specimen was finally caught, an incidental capture as part of a wider study with mist nets, and so it was properly documented and given a formal scientific name: Dicaeum dayakorum. The specific part is in honour of the indigenous Dayak people who live in and help protect the bird’s native forests. Here’s the header (click to enlarge) from the formal paper describing it – the full paper is at https://www.biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4686.4.1
The genus Dicaeum, by the way, includes numerous other species of flowerpecker, many also feeding on mistletoes. These include the Australian Mistletoe Bird Dicaeum hirundinaceum which featured in one of the BBC TV’s David Attenborough natural history series some years ago. The broadcast clip showed a bird wiping the semi-digested mistletoe berry, complete with seed, from it’s er, bum, onto a branch. Very efficient. It’s not clear whether the Spectacled Flowerpecker is that good or whether it’s more of a hit’n’miss mistletoe spreader like our own Mistle Thrush (see various older mistletoe diary entries …).
Mistletoe seed distribution – why leave it all to the birds?
Try doing it yourself with a Mistletoe Grow-Kit from the English Mistletoe Shop
Details at https://englishmistletoeshop.co.uk
Jonathan's Mistletoe Diary 