Myanmar’s Jerdon’s Babbler, a small brown bird with an affinity for grassland, lived in the country’s rolling hills for centuries. But as humans turned the habitat into settlements and rice farms, the bird population plummeted. With the last recorded sighting dating back to July 1941, the bird was gone for good. Or so it seemed. Last year satellite images revealed a remaining patch of undisturbed grassland. Intrigued by the notion that the long-lost songbird might have held out there, in May a team from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the National University of Singapore went to investigate. After just an hour of birding near an abandoned agriculture station just outside the town of Myitkyo, they heard an unusual song. They recorded the sound, and played it back, hoping to catch the attention of the caller. The lure worked. Over the course of two days, they spotted several of the “extinct” babblers, even briefrely handling some of the birds to take blood...