Question: Whats the most rareist type of bird you have ever studied

Renata Medeiros answered on 18 Jun 2013:

The rarest species I’ve studied is actually one of the rarest in the world! It is called Monteiro’s storm petrel (Oceanodroma monteiroi). When I started studying it, my colleagues and I still didn’t know this species existed and thought we were studying another more common species (the Madeiran storm petrel). Our research showed that they were not the same thing and we named the new species after the first scientist who suspected that this new species existed – he was called Luis Monteiro and sadly he died before we found out the truth. Monteiro’s storm petrels are seabirds and the only place in the world where they breed (lay eggs) is a very small islet in the Atlantic Ocean. We believe there are only about 400 of these birds altogether, which isn’t very much at all!