Scientist Takes First-Ever Photo of Rare Bird, Then Kills It in the Name of Science (link added)

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http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/09/first-photo-bird-killed-science


Conservationists debate whether the death of a rare moustached kingfisher is worth the knowledge gained from studying its body.



Moustached kingfisher. (Photo: American Museum of Natural History/Twitter)
OCT 9, 2015 Taylor Hill is an associate editor at TakePart covering environment and wildlife.

When Chris Filardi, director of Pacific Programs at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was finally holding the elusive Guadalcanal moustached kingfisher, he told Slate writer Rachel Gross, it was like finding a unicorn.

Filardi had been searching for the orange, white, and brilliant-blue bird for more than 20 years, when on a field study in the high forests of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, he finally heard the “ko-ko-ko-ko-kiew” sound of what he described as the unmistakable call of a large kingfisher.

After days of tracking, he and his colleagues captured a male moustached kingfisher in a mist net.

“When I came upon the netted bird in the cool shadowy light of the forest I gasped aloud, ‘Oh my god, the kingfisher,’ one of the most poorly known birds in the world was there, in front of me, like a creature of myth come to life.” Filardi wrote in a Sept. 23 blog post.

FULL story at link.