New Britain Thrush

Found only in the mountains of New Britain (Papua New Guinea), this elusive forest thrush was lost for 25 years between April 1999, when several individuals were photographed as part of an ornithological expedition to the Nakanai Mountains, and July 2024, when a single bird was caught on a camera trap in the Whiteman Range.

New Britain Thrush is considered to be Least Concern on the Red List of Threatened Species.

Three New Britain Thrushes were found and photographed by Michael Putnam and Bulisa Iova in the Nakanai Mountains at 1,000 m and 1,100 m asl in April 1999 as part of the University of Wisconsin's New Britain Biological Survey. Just over twenty-five years later, the species was documented again on a camera trap in July 2024 by Ethan Linck, Jason Gregg, and Vincent Patuong in Whiteman Range.

New Britain Thrush (Zoothera talaseae) and Bougainville Thrush (Zoothera atrigena), a similarly-patterned species found only on the island of Bougainville, east of New Britain, were previously lumped into a single species: North Melanesian Ground Thrush (Zoothera talaseae).