YANGON: A bird that was long thought to have gone extinct has been rediscovered in Myanmar after a team of scientists used a recording of the species’ distinctive call to track it down.

The Jerdon’s Babbler — a small brown bird similar in size to a house sparrow — was last spotted in Myanmar in 1941 and was thought to have died out altogether.

But a team of scientists in May 2014 managed to uncover multiple birds nesting in a small area of grassland in Myanmar’s central Bago region, according to their report published in the latest edition of Birding Asia.

The scientists targeted some of the few remaining patches of wild grassland left along Myanmar’s mighty Irrawaddy river, now one of the most heavily cultivated and densely populated regions of the impoverished but emerging southeast Asian nation.

At one small patch of grassland near an abandoned agricultural station, the team heard what they thought could be the babbler’s call.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2015

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