- The mountainous forests of the eastern DRC are home to a strikingly beautiful bird: the yellow-crested helmetshrike.
- The species was considered lost to science until late last year, when an expedition of U.S. and DRC scientists spotted flocks of the birds gliding through the forests of the Itombwe mountains and snapped the first photo.
- Their observations will help to fill in some key knowledge gaps on this little-known species, which faces threats from habitat destruction and climate change.
Michael Harvey recalls the moment he first saw a flock of yellow-crested helmetshrikes flitting through a cloud forest in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: the first confirmed sighting by scientists of the species in 16 years.
“It was more bizarre and exciting than I could have imagined,” says Harvey, an ornithologist and assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).
In December 2023, he and a team of U.S. and DRC ornithologists and herpetologists trekked for weeks in cars, on motorbikes and on foot to reach the Itombwe massif, on the western edge of the Albertine Rift, a vast ecoregion of mountains, valleys and forests spanning five countries in East Africa.
Harvey and a DRC assistant had left their camp to hike up a ridge to look for cloud forest birds. When they reached a fern meadow in a natural forest clearing, rain clouds swept in, and thick swirling mist reduced visibility to around 10 meters (33 feet).
“I’m in the meadow, and inside the cloud forest, I start hearing these wild, snapping sounds and squeals that sounded like wind-up toys,” Harvey says. “Then, out of this pea-soup fog, I see these jet-black shapes, almost blacker than black, starting to emerge in the fog, and I raise my binoculars and that’s when I can see these brilliant, bright, whitish-yellow crests on the birds, the yellow eyes, the yellow eye wattles, and the pink-red legs.”
It was a small flock of six to eight yellow-crested helmetshrikes (Prionops alberti), a species he’d only previously known from books — and one that scientists hadn’t sighted since 2007.
“They were interacting with each other, making these bizarre sounds and doing acrobatics right on the edge of this clearing and then they sort of melted back into the forest and moved down the ridge.”
Harvey pursued them and managed to take some photographs — the first ever for this species — and make recordings of their calls. “We returned to camp, just elated to have had the sighting,” he says.
Finding the yellow-crested helmetshrike wasn’t the main reason Harvey went to Itombwe, though it was a “dream bird” that had been at the back of his mind alongside the Itombwe owl (Tyto prigoginei) and Itombwe nightjar (Caprimulgus prigoginei). The latter two haven’t been recorded by scientists since 1996 and 1955, respectively.
The main reason Harvey went to Itombwe was to obtain a genetic sample from the Grauer’s broadbill (Pseudocalyptomena graueri), a tiny, brilliant-green bird that’s the sole species in its genus. He succeeded: both observing a pair of Grauer’s broadbills and taking a genetic sample. But his first encounter with the helmetshrikes, and further ones the team had during the six-week-long expedition, stick vividly in his mind.
Fellow ornithologist and expedition member Matt Brady, also from UTEP, took a spectacular photograph of a helmetshrike that they later managed to capture in a mist net.
The data collected on the helmetshrikes could help fill in knowledge gaps around this little-known species. It was previously thought, for example, to live and feed in the branches and canopies of tall forest trees, but the team’s observations suggest otherwise.
“They were actually never in the canopy,” Harvey says. “They were always in the mid-story or even understory [trees], so sort of between 1 meter off the ground and maybe [a maximum of] 10-15 meters off the ground,” or a range of 3-50 ft.
The team plans to publish a paper on the status and distribution of the helmetshrikes and all the other birds they encountered in Itombwe. Years of instability and violent conflict between armed rebel groups in the eastern DRC have meant that for years Western scientists were reluctant to visit Itombwe.
However, in the last 10-15 years, some of the rebel groups have been ousted, and some combatants have handed in their weapons, Harvey says.
This presented a unique opportunity to visit, though he and other members of the team relied heavily on expedition manager Aristote Mwenebatu Mlungu’s close connections with local communities. Another of Harvey’s UTEP colleagues, herpetologist Eli Greenbaum, has made numerous trips to the DRC and maintains strong links with staff from the Natural Sciences Research Center near the eastern DRC city of Bukavu, some of who were on the expedition.
“Without their help, this expedition wouldn’t have been possible,” Harvey says.
The Itombwe plateau “is an incredible place in terms of biodiversity, but it is also an area that has become part of all the terrible power struggles between people in the Albertine Rift region over the last several decades,” says John Bates, the Rowe Family Curator of Evolutionary Biology at the Field Museum of Natural History, in Chicago, who was not part of the expedition. “Working there is never easy, so it is exciting that this group of American and Congolese researchers were able to successfully get to sites to encounter this ‘lost’ bird.”
But parts of the massif are threatened by illegal logging and mining, and one study suggests that climate change could make more than 90% of the helmetshrikes’ current habitat unsuitable by 2080.
“I would say the outlook for yellow-crested helmetshrikes is heavily dependent on the trajectory of security and also these mining and logging interests,” Harvey says.
Banner image: The stunning photo is the first ever of a yellow-crested helmetshrike. Image by Matt Brady.
Citation:
Ayebare, S., Plumptre, A. J., Kujirakwinja, D., & Segan, D. (2018). Conservation of the endemic species of the Albertine Rift under future climate change. Biological Conservation, 220, 67-75. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2018.02.001
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