Birdwatchers and avian experts have rejoiced after one of the rarest birds in the United States was spotted at a wildlife preserve in Texas, according to Chron.com.
It had been more than a decade since the last sighting of a brown jay in the state before Bob Bowman, a volunteer at the Saliñeno Wildlife Preserve, eyed one recently.
"We can almost not believe it," Bowman told Border Report, per Fox 8. "Right now I suspect there's no more than nine brown jays in the United States, and they're all within a mile of here."
About the size of a crow, brown jays are long-tailed birds with brown coloring on their backs and wings and white markings on their bellies, per Chron.
For Bowman and his wife, Cate, the event marked a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
"This bird is a very rare bird, for this site especially," Bowman said, according to Fox 8. "And we've never seen one. So, this is a life bird for me and Cate."
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Treehugger described a "life bird" as a species that a birdwatcher has seen for the first time in their lifetime.
While the sighting generated much excitement among bird enthusiasts, it also offered a stark reminder of how once-prevalent bird populations have dwindled, largely because of human activity.
A Cornell study found that bird populations in North America have declined by one-third since 1970. This amounts to a staggering loss of nearly 3 billion birds.
"Birds are indicator species, serving as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth's biological systems are in trouble," the study's authors wrote for The New York Times.
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Still, the rare brown jay sighting offered hope that, with diligent conservation efforts, these population losses might one day be reversed.
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