[goodcanadian]

They don't mention it in the article, but the birds were likely captured using mist nets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist_net). It is a standard technique:

In total, about 18 birds were found at three sites during the expedition.

[is_true]

I know nets are cheap, but, why don't use cameras instead?

[lumpa]

The nets are much more successful in capturing all sorts of birds at once, with little effort, even in environments where you wouldn't get clear line of sight for photos and/or for species that don't sit still for long enough.

Handling the birds makes for far better identification (and more detailed pictures too), which is important for places where unknown, hard to identify or hard to detect species are likely to exist. It also allows taking measurements, banding the birds and even collecting tissue samples. So nets are a far better ROI for some scientific projects.

[tempodox]

Thanks, I was wondering how they got a bird to sit still on a hand for a photo. Not exactly common behavior for flappies.

[is_true]

thanks, makes sense then