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An international team of biologists has discovered a small new species called the Principe Scops Owl, which lives in a remote forest on an island off the west coast of Africa. Barbara Freitasis a PhD researcher studying bird evolution at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. She was part of the team that discovered the Príncipe Scops Owl and she talks about how her team discovered the new species and the threats it currently faces.
Principe is a small island in the Gulf of Guinea, about 200 miles (320 km) west of Gabon. There is a town on the north side of the island, but the southern half is mountainous, densely jungled, and completely uninhabited. In 1998, a biologist named Principe Martim Melo On a trip to Príncipe, he heard rumors of a mysterious bird that was terrorizing the local parrot collectors.
“Instead of finding a baby parrot, they found a strange bird with eyes so big they didn’t know what they were looking at,” Freitas explained. Mello recorded what he believed to be the mystery bird but didn’t see it.
Alexander Watts
Nearly two decades later, in 2016, a Belgian birdwatcher with a passion for owls came to Príncipe and snapped a photo of the little owl that seemed to confirm the rumors Mello had heard. With this evidence, Freitas and Mello flew to Príncipe in 2018 to try to track the owl.
They need to capture an owl to confirm if it is indeed a new species, which they plan to do by playing the recording that Mello made 20 years ago. Freitas and Mello will go out into the jungle, play the recording, and hope that if there are other owls nearby, “they will hear the song and be attracted to it,” Freitas explains. “That’s because they are territorial, so they come to defend their territory.”
Freitas and Merlo traveled to the southern part of the island with the help of local park ranger Ceciliano do Bom Jesus, nicknamed Bikegila. Freitas said the owl appeared before they started playing the recordings.
“We were setting up our tents, putting up our sleeping nets and waiting for dark. Suddenly, we started hearing owls hooting,” she said.
Listen to Freitas, Melo and Bikegila First specimens of the Principe Scops Owl captured and describedwhat do these owls sound like, and Newly discovered species Already threatened by human development, please watch this episode of Dialogue Weekly’s Discovery Channel.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and hosted by Dan Merino. Interim Executive Producer is Mend Mariwany. Eloise Stevens is in charge of our sound design and the theme song was composed by Neeta Sarl.
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