The bare-faced bulbul is a new songbird species discovered in an area of sparse forest among the rugged limestone karsts of Laos. (Iain Woxvold/University of Melbourne)

A new species of bird with a featherless pink face has been discovered and photographed in a remote part of Southeast Asia.

The bare-faced bulbul is a thrush-sized, olive green bird with a light-coloured breast and a bald, pink face. It lives in the trees of a sparse forest among limestone mountains called karsts in Laos.

It is described in the 2009 issue of Forktail, the journal of the U.K.-based Oriental Bird Club, by the scientists who discovered it, Will Duckworth and Rob Timmins of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and the Iain Woxvold of the University of Melbourne.

Bulbuls are a family of about 130 species of songbirds found in Asia, and the bare-faced bulbul is the first new one in more than a century, the society reported.