There are some birds that disappear without making any noise. Not only do they never make headlines or earn a farewell sighting, but they also fade away slowly until people realize this particular bird hasn’t been seen in a long time. This was the case with the Red Weaver until July 3, 2026, when two birders saw three red flashes flying from the bush in Boni-Dodori Forest. They screamed the words they had been looking for for eleven days: “Our birds!”
The birders, James Apolloh Omenya, a 29-year-old ornithologist and bird guide, and Simon Odhiambo, a County-based conservationist who goes by the online name of KenyanBirder, were chosen by their team to be a part of this journey. In 2026, Ornis Birding launched the Lost Birds Expedition Grant. The purpose of the project was to help people who are 18-30 years old find bird species that have quietly disappeared off the radar. James Apolloh Omenya was awarded one of the five grants of the expedition, and he chose two targets for his trip. One of them was the Red Weaver.
In order to appreciate the meaning of this discovery, one should consider that this species was very hard to classify in the first place. Taxonomists did not recognize the Red Weaver as a separate bird species for more than a hundred years. Instead, they classified it as a subspecies of the more common Red-headed Weaver. However, it was in 2024 that the global bird database eBird separated it as a distinct species due to its unique plumage. Almost immediately, this species became another “Lost” one. In 2025, having not been recorded for more than ten years, it was included in the Search for Lost Birds list, created by American Bird Conservancy, Re: wild, and BirdLife International. This list tracks more than 100 species of the world that have not been seen by humans during the last ten years or more. Thus, a bird that had barely gotten its own name became a “lost” one.
Before James Apolloh Omenya and Simon Odhiambo’s expedition, the last confirmed sighting of the bird took place back in April 2014. At that time, one male bird was captured in photographs in the Boni-Dodori Forest by John Musina. This was, according to the team’s information, the second time the bird was being photographed. The rest of the information came from rumors and memories.
And this, was what made it possible for the team to find the missing species. Instead of walking around the forest, the team decided to use information from the locals. People from local communities recognized the bird by its description, told stories about its sighting in the past, and suggested two nearby villages where it would be worth visiting. It can seem insignificant, but it is actually the key point of the story: while the bird seemed to be “lost” for science, it was not really missing for everyone. The local Basuba community even had its own name for it: Shongwe Kudhude, “the weaver that is red in color”.
The rediscovery moment finally happened on that July morning, and it did not take a lot of time, but it was enough. The team used the Merlin Bird ID app in order to get the first-ever recordings of the species’ sounds.
Needless to say, the Red Weaver is not a critically endangered species. According to the IUCN, it is in the “Least Concern” category. Yet this is exactly what makes the story worth telling. While the search for a missing bird usually implies some attempts to save an extinct species, sometimes rediscovery means only an admission that we know very little about the nature around us and how much information has been available for a long time. As Ornis Birding’s director stated, this finding advances the vision for future monitoring of the world’s least-known species.
For a bird company like ours, such stories are the main idea behind the process of searching for birds.
