Guwahati, March 7: Two birders - Deborshee Gogoi and Porag Jyoti Phukan - were in luck this Saturday.

The duo had gone to a wetland in Tinsukia district to photograph Baer's pochard, a winter visitor, when they spotted a new bird species for the first time in India.

Gogoi, an assistant professor in the department of management, Digboi College, and Phukan, an employee of Oil India Ltd, Duliajan, checked the records and found that they had spotted the white-browed crake ( Amaurornis cinerea) at the Maguri-Motapung Beel in Tinsukia. "Our prime target was photographing the critically endangered Baer's pochard, which is a winter visitor to Assam valley. Around 4.12pm on their way back from the beel, we saw a bird in the marshes that looked like a crake. We took few photographs of the bird ," Gogoi said.

"We observed two birds - a male followed by a female - for nearly 38 minutes sitting quietly on our country boat till 4.50pm. We photographed them as the birds did not resemble the Porzana crakes found in the Northeast. At first, we tried to compare the birds with the field guides, but no illustration matched the species. Later, we took the help of the Oriental Bird Club image database to identify the birds as white-browed crakes," Phukan said.

The birders were accompanied by Dipankar Phukan, a local bird guide from Maguri. Both Gogoi and Phukan were delighted to identify a bird that is new to the Indian subcontinent. "We started birding about six years ago and today we witnessed one of the most memorable events of our birding career, and that too, together," Gogoi said.

"It will be interesting to know whether this bird is a passage migrant, a vagrant or a regular winter visitor to this part of the country or is it following natural dispersal to the Northeast," Phukan said.

The duo said they would soon publish their account of the spotting of the new species in a scientific journal.

The white-browed crake, which has an extremely large range of 3,64,0000 square km, inhabits marshes and other wetlands in parts of China, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia and most islands in the southern and western Pacific Ocean.

According to Pritam Baruah, an avid birder from the region, "This species is not known to be a long-distance migrant so I wonder what brought it here. It will be interesting to know if it is expanding its range."

Craig Robson, a professional ornithologist specialising in Asian birds, author and artist said, "It's amazing how this bird has spread its range in Southeast Asia already."

Maguri-Motapung Beel has been springing surprises for the entire birding community over the past few years. In December 2014, Baikal bush warbler was sighted, which was the first record from Indian subcontinent. Last year in October, the critically endangered white-bellied heron was sighted and photographed.