The owlet-nightjar Aegotheles bennettii terborghi was described from a single male specimen given by a local man to Jared Diamond, while he was collecting in the Karimui Basin in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, in 1964. There has been no further observation of the taxon, despite extensive field work in 2011-12. In July 2016 we travelled to Karimui with the explicit aim of searching for this taxon, which resulted in the first-ever field observation, including photographs and a possible sound-recording of its call.