Seeing something new

The Cambodian Tailorbird, photo by Ashish John, Wildlife Conservation Society

A "new" bird was identified recently, not in the outlying regions of mysterious Borneo, but at the very edge of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's teeming capital. How cool is that. The discovery was announced in the Oriental Bird Club's journal Forktail, by ornithologist Simon Mahood. He said in an interview with the New York Times:

I've always wanted to discover a bird species, but I never expected it would happen like this. I certainly didn't expect to be standing in flip-flops and shorts a half an hour from home.

This is encouraging news even if the Cambodian Tailorbird, who builds cradles made of gossamer for its young, is already on the Near Threatened list.

It is heartening because it's good to know that you can find something amazing, while wearing flip-flops, in your very own backyard. Maybe not a new species. But every single thing that you see, in the way that you see it, is new. Nobody has ever seen it before just as you have, and it will never appear again just so. A happy thought.