IN THE SMALL SEASIDE village of Basima, a hunter leans forward and taps a card showing an illustration of a bird. He’s seen that species, the Metallic Starling, known locally as Bune wiwi, here on Fergusson Island in eastern Papua New Guinea. Carefully he taps another card, the Goldie’s Bird-of-Paradise, or Siai, which is found only on this archipelago. And another, and another. Children peek at our group of strangers, who’d arrived yesterday and set up a makeshift camp.
There are 25 cards, each showing a different bird. Some obviously don’t live here, like the Northern Cassowary, a flightless, fivefoot-tall avian giant. Others are common residents that inhabit the village’s periphery or the forests where Fergusson Islanders hunt for food and harvest housing material. There are also more challenging cards—look-alikes of local species and small birds only an experienced observer could identify.
Finally, there’s an ace card mixed in: the Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon, with its wide eyes the color of blood, stilted yellow legs, cadmium-orange wings, and a long, tent-like tail. When the hunter pauses over this card, time slows down. Now and then, I exchange glances with our guide and translator, Elimo Malesa, and one of my expedition co-leaders, Jordan Boersma. Will the hunter choose it?
The Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon is the strange bird that has drawn us to this small tropical island. A large, poor-flying pigeon with a pheasant-like tail, it’s the rarest of four sister species of pheasant pigeon scattered across New Guinea. But even calling it rare may be generous: Scientists haven’t laid eyes on it, or heard its far-carrying song, in more than 100 years. Our eight-person team has come to Fergusson Island, the only place it’s thought to live, to seek it out.
I knew we could easily fail. Islands like Fergusson are sites of more than 90 percent of bird extinctions, where naturally small avian populations succumb to introduced predators, disease, and habitat loss. And studies show morphologically distinct species, like the pheasant pigeon, are at highest risk of blinking out. But there were reasons for hope. Fergusson Island is mostly roadless and covered in excruciatingly steep mountains, which is likely why few scientists have come here since Scottish naturalist Andrew Goldie first collected the species in 1882. A handful of specimens and a 140-year-old paper describing the bird are the source of all we know about it. There’s also its behavior: Pheasant pigeons are highly secretive. Perhaps it’s been here all along.
John C. Mittermeier is optimistic. He’s the director of the Search for Lost Birds at American Bird Conservancy
