Famous ‘Lost Bird’ Found, Photographed For The First Time Ever In Africa

An elusive bird that has not been seen for nearly 20 years is rediscovered and photographed in the Democratic Republic of Congo

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The first-ever photograph of the Yellow-crested Helmetshrike (Prionops alberti), was snapped during a recent expedition led by scientists at The University of Texas at El Paso. (Credit: Matt Brady, University of Texas at El Paso)

A long-lost bird, the Yellow-crested Helmetshrike, Prionops alberti, has been found and photographed in Africa. According to the American Bird Conservancy, a lost bird is a species that has not been confirmed to exist in the past ten or more years. The yellow-crested helmetshrike, also known as King Albert’s helmetshrike, has not been seen in almost two decades.

The photographs of the helmetshrikes were reviewed and confirmed by ornithologist Cameron Rutt, who leads the Lost Birds project at the American Bird Conservancy.

The discovery came during a six-week expedition to the Itombwe Massif, a mountain range in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. These mountains run along the west shore of the northern part of Lake Tanganyika in the Great Rift Valley, a complex and tectonically active region more than 6,000 kilometers long where the Arabian Peninsula is splitting away from much of the African continent. The Itombwe Massif are cloaked in a vast contiguous montane forest where a rich diversity of wildlife and plants can be found.

“It was a mind-blowing experience to come across these birds,” said expedition co-leader, ornithologist Michael Harvey, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Professor Harvey’s research focuses on avian genomics and evolution.

“We knew they might be possible here, but I was not prepared for how spectacular and unique they would appear in life,” Professor Harvey enthused.

The expedition was co-led by herpetologist Eli Greenbaum, a Director of Biodiversity Collections and Professor at UTEP, where his research expertise is the evolutionary genetics and taxonomy of Central African amphibians and reptiles. The expedition was joined by ornithologist Matt Brady, a former ornithological cartographer who now works with the collections management team at UTEP, and an international group of scientists, including a team of Congolese researchers from the Centre de Recherche en Sciences Naturelles.