FIRST ON RADAR: A new bird species has been discovered in Tawi-Tawi

Now the Tawi-Tawi Imperial Pigeon needs protection.

A bird hiding in plain sight for more than a century has finally been recognized as a species of its own.

The Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Foundation announced on Facebook the description of the Tawi-Tawi Imperial Pigeon, a newly recognized bird species endemic to the forests of Tawi-Tawi in the southern Philippines.

The species, Ducula tawitawi, was described by ornithologist Matthew R. Halley in a paper published September 2 in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club.

What makes the discovery remarkable is that scientists did not suddenly encounter an unknown bird deep in the forest. The evidence had been sitting inside museum collections for decades.

Only three known specimens from Tawi-Tawi were available for the study. Two were collected in 1891 during the Menage Expedition and are preserved at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

A third was collected in 1971 by renowned Filipino ornithologist Dioscoro S. Rabor during an expedition to Tawi-Tawi and is preserved at the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science.

For years, the birds were associated with the Pink-bellied Imperial Pigeon, Ducula poliocephala. But the Tawi-Tawi specimens have an important difference: white throats instead of brown ones.

Their voices provided another clue. Audio recordings from the 1990s revealed that the Tawi-Tawi population was vocally distinct from both the Pink-bellied Imperial Pigeon and the closely related White-bellied Imperial Pigeon.

Based on its unique appearance and voice, Halley described the Tawi-Tawi Imperial Pigeon as a new species.

But the excitement of discovery comes with an urgent warning.

The Tawi-Tawi Imperial Pigeon is endemic to Tawi-Tawi, meaning it is known from nowhere else on Earth. And the forests it depends on are shrinking.

The study warns that the newly recognized species faces an “imminent risk of extinction.”

The Philippines has gained another remarkable species known to science. Now comes the more difficult task: protecting the Tawi-Tawi Imperial Pigeon and its remaining forest habitat before this discovery becomes a record of something we have already lost.