An international team of scientists, led by Per Alstrom of the Swedish Species Information Centre and Fumin Lei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a new bird in China, the Sichuan Bush Warbler, as reported in the current issue of Avian Research.

The team comprising scientists from Sweden, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and Vietnam have named the bird Locustella chengi. This scientific name has been chosen especially to honour the late Cheng Tso- hsin, China's greatest ornithologist.

The Sichuan bush warbler is endemic to China, residing in five mountainous provinces in central China; Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Hubei and northwest Hunan. The winter range of the bird is still unknown.

It is a relatively small bird with an average length of 13 cm and weight of 10 grams. The wing length is 5.5 cm, and the tail is 5.7 cm long. It is a brownish-grey bird with a pale yellowish tinge.

Pamela Rasmussen, Michigan State University (MSU), an integrative biologist and co-author on the paper, told, "The Sichuan bush warbler is exceedingly secretive and difficult to spot as its preferred habitat is dense brush and tea plantations. However, it distinguishes itself thanks to its distinctive song that consists of a low-pitched drawn-out buzz, followed by a shorter click, repeated in series".

The signature song of Sichuan bush warbler can be found on MSU's Avian Vocalizations Centre website, which contains songs of thousands of birds.

The closest cousin of Sichuan bush warbler is the Russet bush warbler. The two warblers share the same mountain habitats and have similar genetics. But the Sichuan bush warbler prefers to live at lower elevations.

Sichuan bush warbler is locally common is not under any imminent threat, as it has a widespread habitat which is not threatened.