Tibetan mountain finch rediscovered after 80 years

05:35, 23 October 2012

LONDON. October 23. KAZINFORM It has been missing for 80 years but Sillem's Mountain Finch has now been rediscovered on the Tibetan plateau by a trekker who was too ill to leave camp.

The mountain finch has been an enigma ever since its discovery in 1929, not least because it wasn't identified until 1992.

Two specimens of the sparrow-sized grey and white bird with a russet head were collected by Dutch ornithologist Jerome Alexander Sillem on an expedition to the Karakoram mountain range in 1929.

Nowadays this is the disputed border region of China, India and Pakistan and a no-go area for birders.

The specimens were labelled as a race of Brandt's Mountain Finch (Leucosticte brandti) and consigned to a drawer in the Amsterdam Zoological Museum.

And there they remained until 1992 when a modern-day Dutch ornithologist, Kees Roselaar, opened the drawer and realised the two specimens were a distinctive species in their own right. And he named the new species Leucosticte sillemi - after the original finder.

Full story

Environment