In the 1840s, a mystery bird was caught on an expedition to the East Indies. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, the nephew of former French leader Napoleon, described it to science and named it the black-browed babbler (<i>Malacocincla perspicillata</i>).
The species was never again seen in the wild, and a stuffed specimen featuring a bright yellow glass eye was the only proof of its existence.
However, the black-browed babbler has now been rediscovered in the rainforests of Borneo.
Two local men, Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan, chanced upon a bird that they did not recognize in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan province in October last year