For the first time in almost four decades, a new bird species has been discovered in the United States.

But there's a catch: the Bryan's shearwater was identified in a museum collection. Though others have been reported, the first living bird-in-hand example awaits finding.

"I'm pretty certain it's still out there," said Peter Pyle, an institution at the Institute for Bird Populations.

Pyle identified the shearwater while compiling a monograph on Hawaii's birds. The specimen had been collected in 1963 at Midway Atoll, and was identified at the time as a little shearwater, an especially small member of its long-winged seabird family.

When he looked closer at the bird, Pyle thought it was actually a Boyd's shearwater, though the match still wasn't perfect: It had a shorter wing and tail. But genetic analyses showed that neither identification was correct.

Pyle and Smithsonian Institution ornithologists Robert Fleischer and Andreanna Welch named the new species Puffinus bryani after Edwin Bryan, a former curator at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. They describe the bird in an article published in The Condor.

While newly-discovered bird species are not rare in the deep jungles of South America and South Asia, P. bryani is the first new U.S. bird since 1974, when the Po'ouli was found in Maui.

"Many ornithologists dream of discovering new species," said Pyle. "Some are still doing that down in the Amazon. But to find one in our backyard is surprising."

Much remains to be learned about this new species, starting with where it lives. According to Pyle, a second specimen was tagged and recorded on Midway in 1990. Reports of small, unidentified shearwaters from Japan, California and the southern Gulf of Alaska may represent Bryan's shearwater sightings.

*Images: Pyle et al./*The Condor

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Citation: "A new species of shearwater (Puffinus) recorded from Midway Atoll, northwestern Hawaiian Islands." By Peter Pyle, Andreanna J. Welch and Robert C Fleischer. The Condor, published online June 14, 2011.