First new species of bird discovered in U.S. for 37 years

Ornithologists have found a new species of bird in the U.S. for the first time in nearly four decades - dead, in a museum collection. Although other examples of what has been dubbed Bryan's shearwater, a kind of long-winged seabird, have been spotted, no-one has yet held a live specimen. 

The new species was identified by Peter Pyle, an ornithologist at the U.S. Institute for Bird Populations, who noticed it while compiling a monograph on Hawaiian birds. He said: 'Many ornithologists dream of discovering new species. Some are still doing that down in the Amazon. 

But to find one in our backyard is surprising.' The specimen Mr Pyle used to register the new species was collected at Midway Atoll, Hawaii, in 1963, and was originally labelled as an exceptionally small Little Shearwater. On closer inspection, Mr Pyle thought it may actually be a Boyd's shearwater, but it had a shorter wing and tail. 

In the end, genetic analyses showed neither identification was right and that the specimen was a representative of an entirely new species. Together with Smithsonian Institution ornithologists Robert Fleischer and Andreanna Welch, Mr Pyle named the new species Puffinus bryani, after Edwin Bryan, a former curator at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. 

'Many ornithologists dream of discovering new species. Some are still doing that down in the Amazon. But to find one in our backyard is surprising' Peter Pyle, U.S. Institute of Bird Populations It is the first new U.S. bird to be added to the records since 1974, when the Po'ouli was found in Maui. But there remains much to be discovered about the new species - starting with just where it lives. 

A second specimen was tagged and recorded on Midway in 1990, Mr Pyle said, and reports of birds fitting the Bryan's shearwater description have been spotted as far afield as Japan and the southern Gulf of Alaska. 'I'm pretty certain it's still out there,' Mr Pyle added, although the bird is rare and possibly threatened. The new discovery is described in an article published in the academic journal The Condor.