Guwahati: Birdwatchers have sighted a new songbird in Arunachal Pradesh which they have named Lisu Wren Babbler, named after the Lisu community of the state. An expedition team of six birdwatchers trekked to a remote corner of Arunachal Pradesh to discover the potentially new species of Wren Babbler.

 The expedition team consisted of bird-watchers from Bengaluru, Chennai, and Thiruvananthapuram set out to climb the Mugaphi peak in north-eastern Arunachal Pradesh in search of the rare and elusive Grey-bellied Wren Babbler in March this year.

However, they discovered a new species. The findings were published by Indian BIRDS, a peer-reviewed journal of South Asian ornithology.  

The Grey-bellied Wren Babbler is found in Myanmar with a few sightings recorded in China and Thailand also. There was only one previous report of Grey-bellied Wren Babbler from India when two specimens were collected from these same mountains in Arunachal Pradesh in 1988.

One of the specimens was now in the Smithsonian Museum in the United States. It was identified as a Grey-bellied Wren Babbler by the ornithologist Pamela Rasmussen when she included this species in her book published in 2005.