The Great Kingfisher Controversy

In September this year, while tramping the forests of Guadalcanal, an ornithologist named Christopher Filardi, from the American Museum of Natural History spotted a male mustachioed kingfisher (Actenoides bougainvillei excelsus), a “ghost bird” that he had been seeking for 20 years in the jungles of the Solomon Islands. A beautiful creature – or was – b…