Last Call

At what point does the absence of evidence equate to the evidence of absence? That’s the question at the heart of the saga of Brazil’s Kinglet Calyptura, the ‘lost jewel of the Atlantic Forest’.

These colorful little flycatchers are likely extinct, but hope is still alive amongst the thousands of dedicated birders who continue looking for them.

The Kinglet Calyptura is a diminutive, strikingly colorful flycatcher found in the canopy of humid forests of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The species was common in specimen collections made in the region up until about 1860. It then disappeared from the ornithological record for over a century. In the mid-1980s one of Brazil’s first birding clubs was formed in Rio de Janeiro composed of twenty or so professional and amateur ornithologists. Bird watchers are always motivated by the search for rare birds and there had been no sightings of the Kinglet Calyptura for over a century. The large tracts of unsurveyed forest surrounding Rio de Janeiro provided hope. Was it extinct? Answering this question became their obsession.

For almost twenty years the Kinglet Calyptura haunted their dreams. Systematic searches for the species were unsuccessful, but they still felt that at any moment the bird would appear.

Then a breakthrough!

A pair was found along a major highway within the Serra dos Órgãos National Park. Trusted observers had four total sightings over two days. Although they could not document this initial sighting, they felt sure that more opportunities would come.

Nearly thirty years later, there are now over fifty thousand Brazilian bird watchers armed with high-powered digital cameras and an inexhaustible competitiveness to photograph the rarest of the rare. Their combined efforts have produced five million bird photographs, including of other species suspected to be extinct, just not of a Kinglet Calyptura. That such intensive effort has not produce any evidence is telling and makes it hard not to accept that this jewel has truly been lost.