The Last Unphotographed Birds

If you have been birding recently, there is a good chance that you have either used camera or met another birder with a camera. In the past few years, photography has become increasingly integrated into birding to the point that for many birders having a camera is now as important as binoculars. (In the future the two may become one and the same.)

The boom in bird photography means there are more photos of birds (more than 73 million archived in eBird alone) and more species of birds being photographed. Curious what a Red-billed Ground-cuckoo looks like? There are photos for that. How about a Snoring Rail? Photos. The increasing diversity of photographed birds opens up opportunities to learn about the appearance and behavior of species, and for more people to contribute independently verifiable documentation of species. For a documentation-based initiative like the Search for Lost Birds, this is great news.

Scrolling through this incredible array of photographed species also prompts a question. Are there any birds out there that have never been photographed at all? If so, what are they?

How many bird species have never been photographed?

To try to answer this question, we reviewed photo and video records archived in Macaulay Library. (Since still images can be extracted from video, we counted those as one and the same.) Similar to the method used by the Search for Lost Birds, we considered birds that are species in either the eBird/Clements Checklist or HBW/BirdLife Taxonomic Checklist. Once we had the list of species with no photos or videos in Macaulay, we checked for images of the remaining birds in iNaturalist, WikiAves, and with searches on Google and Google Scholar. Finally, we emailed people to ask if they knew of images for selected species. All relatively simple, but for 11,000 plus bird species, it took some work.

Searching for images of every bird species reveals some incredible examples of photographic documentation. There are photos of extinct birds. The Ou and Kauai Oo in Hawaii, for example; the Atitlan Grebe from Guatemala, and New Zealand’s Laughing Owl. There are photos of Lost Birds, like the Cozumel Thrasher, Red-throated Lorikeet, and even this incredible video of an Imperial Woodpecker. And there are photos of impossibly cryptic and rarely-detected birds like the Sulawesi Woodcock, Night Parrot, and Chestnut-shouldered Goshawk, to name a few.

All that is to say that if, in 2025, a bird has truly never been photographed, it is notable. And if a species gets photographed for the first time ever, it is an exciting achievement. This ‘first photographs’ achievement has been true for several recently rediscovered Lost Birds, including White-tailed Tityra in 2022, Black-lored Waxbill in 2023, and New Britain Goshawk and Vilcabamba Inca in 2024.

So how many birds are still out there that have never been photographed at all? As far as we can tell, the answer is… drumroll please… 84 extant bird species that have never been photographed alive.

The Last Unphotographed Birds

If many, or perhaps all, of the bird names on the list below are unfamiliar to you, there are a few patterns to consider about this group of species that have yet to be photographed.

Probably the most striking is just how short the list is. Eighty-four species out of more than 11,000 is not many. Plus, 77 them are Lost Birds. This means that only seven species that have been documented in the past decade have never been photographed. If we were to consider the global birding community’s collective life list as all of the World’s ‘found’ birds (i.e., those that not on the Lost Birds list) than these seven species are the last remaining global photo targets. (Notably, all seven are either recent splits or species where there is some taxonomic disagreement over their status.)

In other words, as a global community we have very nearly photographed every bird on Earth.

A few other points to ponder:

Geography— The geographic skew of the unphotographed species mirrors the biases in citizen science coverage (see discussion of that here). Europe has no unphotographed birds. The Americas, Asia, and Africa have a handful each. More than a third of the species are in Pacific region and particularly New Guinea and its surrounding islands. (If you are excited by the idea of getting the first ever photos of a species, this is the region to focus on.)

Timing— The first photograph of a wild bird was in 1884, the oldest images in Macaulay are from around 1917. So, any bird species without confirmed records since the 1880s is, for obvious reasons, unlikely to have been photographed. This includes the longest-lost species on the Lost Birds list, like Jamaican Pauraque, Coppery Thorntail, and New Caledonian Lorikeet. A few other temporal benchmarks in the development of bird photography include: The first publicly available 35 mm film cameras around 1913; the launch of the first telephotos lenses in the early 1960s; and the beginnings of the digital photography in the early 2000s. What stands out here is just how few birds have records since 2000 but do not have photographs (11 species by our count). If a bird species has been seen at all in the age of digital photography, there are has almost always pictures of it.

Taxonomy— A number of the unphotographed birds have only recently been recognized as distinct species or are only considered species by one taxonomic authority. As noted, this is true for all seven of the non-lost birds without photos. Given the species-focus of birding, taxonomy has undoubtedly contributed to the lack of images of these species and we would not be surprised some of the newly-minted species on this list are photographed soon.

Photography versus audio recordings – On Xeno-canto, Shaun maintains a list of birds not yet sound-recorded. As of late 2024, this totals 152 species. As one might expect, there is overlap between species with no sound recordings and those with no photographs. Overall though, the global efforts at photo documentation have been more comprehensive and there are only a handful of birds with sound recordings but no images (14 as far as we can tell).

One last note before you dive into the list: We undoubtedly missed images in this process! If you have photographs of any of these species or know of a bird that should be on here but is not, let us know through the Get in Touch page.

Birds That Have Never Been Photographed

North America and the Caribbean

Six unphotographed species, all of them Lost Birds. None with sound recordings or confirmed records since 1934.

Jamaican Pauraque
Zapata Rail
Guadalupe Storm-Petrel
Jamaican Petrel
Semper's Warbler
St. Kitts Bullfinch

South America

Eleven unphotographed species, all of them Lost Birds. The most recently documented are Pernambuco Pygmy-Owl and Saffron-breasted Redstart with records from 1990 and 2000, respectively. These are also the only two species that have been sound-recorded (marked with †).

Cayenne Nightjar
Coppery Thorntail
Turquoise-throated Puffleg
Pernambuco Pygmy-Owl†
Sinú Parakeet
Glaucous Macaw
Rio de Janeiro Antwren
Kinglet Calyptura
Vilcabamba Brushfinch
Saffron-breasted Redstart†
Duida Grass-Finch

Asia

Fifteen unphotographed species, including one, Minahasa Shortwing, which is not a Lost Bird (marked with an asterisk). The shortwing, called “Great Shortwing (Minahasa)” in the eBird taxonomy, has recent sound recordings from 2015. Sangihe White-eye has also been sound-recorded.

Crested Shelduck
Dulit Partridge
Manipur Bush-Quail
Himalayan Quail
Sulu Bleeding-heart
Cebu Brown-Dove
Negros Fruit-Dove
Javan Lapwing
Siau Scops-Owl
Sangihe Dwarf-Kingfisher
Irrawaddy Broadbill
Blue-wattled Bulbul
Sangihe White-eye†
Rück's Blue Flycatcher
Minahasa Shortwing*†

Africa

Seventeen unphotographed species, all of them Lost Birds. The most recently documented is Kabobo Apalis, recorded in 2007. The apalis and Grauer’s Cuckooshrike have been sound-recorded (marked †).

Nechisar Nightjar
Itombwe Nightjar
Chestnut Owlet
White-chested Tinkerbird
Grauer's Cuckooshrike†
Rusty Lark
Russet Lark
Obbia Lark
Lendu Crombec
Kabobo Apalis†
Tana River Cisticola
Red Sea Swallow
Prigogine's Greenbul
Chapin's Mountain-Babbler
Prigogine's Sunbird
Yellow-legged Weaver
Bates's Weaver

Oceania

Thirty-five unphotographed birds, including six which are not Lost Birds and have records since 2015 (marked with asterisk) and eight which have been sound-recorded (marked †). We have divided this large area into subregions.

Australia (2 species)

Buff-breasted Buttonquail
Coxen’s Fig-Parrot

New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands (26 species)

New Britain Bronzewing
New Caledonian Nightjar
New Caledonian Owlet-nightjar
Bare-legged Swiftlet
Mayr's Swiftlet
Three-toed Swiftlet
New Caledonian Rail
Makira Moorhen
New Caledonian Buttonquail
Slaty-mantled Goshawk†
Manus Masked-Owl
Black-fronted Fig-Parrot
Creamy-breasted Fig-Parrot
New Caledonian Lorikeet
Biak Myzomela
Long-billed Myzomela
Brass's Friarbird†
Guadalcanal Fantail*†
Vella Lavella Monarch*†
New Britain Flyrobin *†
Bismarck Thicketbird
Guadalcanal Thicketbird
Guadalcanal White-eye*†
Mountain Starling
White-headed Island-Thrush*†
Mamberamo Sunbird*†

Polynesia (7 species)

Samoan Moorhen
Ua Pou Monarch
South Island Kokako
Moorea Reed Warbler
Pohnpei Starling
Olomao
Oahu Alauahio