Calling all birders! Amateurs asked to help spot 126 ‘lost’ bird species

Citizen scientists can keep their eyes and ears open for a bunch of bird species that haven't been documented in more than 10 years.

Paging all bird enthusiasts: Researchers need your help solving a long list of mysteries — namely, what has happened to 126 species of birds and, most importantly, if they even exist anymore.

The Search for Lost Birds, a collaboration between Re:wild, the American Bird Conservancy and BirdLife International, is a newly updated dataset of bird species that have been “lost” to science, meaning they have not been accounted for in at least 10 years.

And that’s where citizen scientists come in, acting as ears and eyes to help confirm whether these species are still gracing the land and skies around the world.

To curate their lost birds list, researchers combed through more than 42 million photos, videos and audio recordings listed on citizen scientist platforms dedicated to wildlife — The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library, iNaturalist and xeno-canto — as well as parsing through museum collections, search engine results and research papers. Local experts were also brought in to help, giving insight into which bird species have not had a documented sighting between 2012 and 2021.

The initial analysis, published in 2021, originally identified 144 lost bird species, but in the years since they have managed to rediscover 14 of the species that were thought to be missing, two species were subject to taxonomic clarification and another two species were found living under the care of humans.

The list highlights birds that have newly disappeared, as well as many who haven’t been seen for more than 150 years. For example, the most recently lost species, the Papuan whipbird, hasn’t been documented by scientists or registered on citizen science platforms in 13 years. South America’s white-tailed tityra, however, is the longest-lost bird and hasn’t had a confirmed sighting in 195 years.

“Figuring out why these birds have become lost and then trying to find them can feel like a detective story,” John C. Mittermeier, the director of the Search for Lost Birds at American Bird Conservancy, said in a press release for the project.