A bird lost since 1882 walked past the camera

Researchers set trail cameras in the mountains of Papua New Guinea hoping to photograph a pigeon last documented in 1882. For weeks, the cameras caught nothing useful. Then, on the final day of the expedition, one frame showed the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, a ground-dwelling bird with a fanned tail, walking calmly past the lens. The team had spent a month searching a single remote island, following tips from local hunters who said they still heard the bird's low call. Jordan Boersma, a researcher on the project, said the group wept when they saw the image. The species had gone undocumented so long that some feared it was extinct. It was not. It had been on Fergusson Island the whole time, unbothered, doing exactly what ground pigeons do, which is mostly walk.