Birds of New Guinea: Second Edition (Princeton Field Guides) - Softcover

Pratt, Thane K.; Beehler, Bruce M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691095639 ISBN 13: 9780691095639

Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

This is the completely revised edition of the essential field guide to the birds of New Guinea. The world's largest tropical island, New Guinea boasts a spectacular avifauna characterized by cassowaries, megapodes, pigeons, parrots, cuckoos, kingfishers, and owlet-nightjars, as well as an exceptionally diverse assemblage of songbirds such as the iconic birds of paradise and bowerbirds. Birds of New Guinea is the only guide to cover all 780 bird species reported in the area, including 366 endemics. Expanding its coverage with 111 vibrant color plates--twice as many as the first edition--and the addition of 635 range maps, the book also contains updated species accounts with new information about identification, voice, habits, and range.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thane K. Pratt is wildlife biologist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey's Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center and a conservationist of birds of the tropical Pacific. He is the lead editor of Conservation Biology of Hawaiian Forest Birds. Bruce M. Beehler is an ornithologist in the Division of Birds at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and a tropical ecologist with interests in the birds and rainforests of the Asia-Pacific region. He is the author of Lost Worlds: Adventures in the Tropical Rainforest.

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Praise for the first edition:"This book is not only indispensable to any bird-watcher visiting New Guinea and the adjacent islands, but, owing to the wealth of its information, it will be of great interest to anyone who is seriously interested in birds."--American Scientist

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Birds of New Guinea

By Thane K. Pratt, Bruce M. Beehler, John C. Anderton, Szabolcs Kókay, James Coe, Dale Zimmerman

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-09563-9

Contents

Preface, 9, 
Acknowledgments, 11, 
Abbreviations, 13, 
1. Introduction, 14, 
2. How to Use This Book, 17, 
3. New Guinea Natural History, 20, 
4. In the Field in Search of Birds, 33, 
Selected References, 36, 
Web Sources, 39, 
Plates, 40, 
Species Accounts, 262, 
Index, 517, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1. SCOPE OF THE BOOK

New Guinea is the center of bird diversity in Australasia (Australia and New Guinea combined, plus nearby islands). Here lives one of the world's four great tropical avifaunas, separate in its history and evolution from those of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The region is famous for being home to a rich and distinctive humid forest avifauna characterized by cassowaries, megapodes, pigeons, parrots, cuckoos, kingfishers, owlet-nightjars, and especially the oscine passerines or songbirds. The latter include hundreds of small insectivores belonging to numerous families centered on the region, and most renowned of all, the birds of paradise and bowerbirds. The uniqueness of the ancient passerine lineages that evolved in the region are only now coming to light with the detailed molecular systematic studies that have recently elevated seven New Guinean endemic songbird lineages to full familial status—the satinbirds, typical berrypeckers, painted berrypeckers, the berryhunters, ploughbills, ifrits, and melampittas. These relatively obscure montane forest denizens are fascinating, but overshadowed by the more prodigious songbird lineages that also apparently evolved in New Guinea only to expand out to the forestlands of Australia, Oceania, and Asia.

This volume treats all species of birds known to occur within the New Guinea Region as defined by Mayr (1941), comprising the huge equatorial island of New Guinea and its numerous closely associated satellite islands and island groups (inside cover). This second edition of Birds of New Guinea now includes detailed accounts of 779 bird species—70 more than the first edition.

The name New Guinea can cause some confusion. New Guinea is a geographic rather than political term that refers to the main island in the region, herein also abbreviated as NG or referred to as the mainland. The island is not Papua New Guinea (here PNG), which is a country that includes both the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous other islands to the north and east, most of them outside the region covered by this book. The western half of the island of New Guinea comprises the Indonesian provinces of West Papua (Papua Barat) and Papua, collectively once called West Irian or Irian Jaya. (The name Papua was formerly, but separately, also adopted for a portion of Papua New Guinea prior to the independence of that country). To keep things simple, we'll avoid the name Papua and the adjective Papuan when we mean New Guinea or things New Guinean, although this word is conserved for many bird names.

Aside from the main landmass of New Guinea, the New Guinea Region includes numerous islands on the continental shelf or verges thereof: the Raja Ampat Islands, here called the Northwestern Islands; islands of Geelvink (Cenderawasih) Bay, here called the Bay Islands; the Aru Islands to the southwest; the small fringing islands along the North Coast of PNG; and lastly the islands of Milne Bay Province, here called the Southeastern Islands. Politically, the New Guinea Region is made up of two countries, Indonesia in the west, and Papua New Guinea in the east. Thus, it does not include any of the islands in Torres Strait, which belong to Australia. The area covered extends from the equator to 12°S latitude, and from 129 to 155°E longitude—a region 3100 km long by 850 km wide, and including what is the largest expanse of continuous tropical humid forest in the Asia-Pacific region.

Marine waters we consider to be within the region are all surrounding seas: the Seram, Halmahera, Bismarck, Solomon, Coral, and Arafura Seas, and the open Pacific Ocean to the north, out to approximately 200 km. The term Oceania refers to the main body of the tropical Pacific Ocean that lies off the continental shelf, a vast realm of open ocean and small islands, most of it outside the New Guinea Region.

1.2. THE AVIFAUNA

The 779 bird species of the New Guinea avifauna can be classified into four discrete groups: 621 breeding land and freshwater species (some augmented by migrant Australian populations), 20 tropical seabirds (resident or visiting), 60 migrants from eastern Asia, 33 migrants from Australia and New Zealand, 36 vagrants, 5 non-native resident species, and 4 hypothetical species (of uncertain status). By far the richest segment is that comprising land and freshwater birds; these are the rainforest, montane, and alpine species, plus species of more specialized habitats such as mangrove and savannah, that provide the New Guinea Region with such an exotic and varied bird fauna. Of these, 365 species (or 59%) are endemic to the New Guinea Region, meaning they are found nowhere else. It is this primarily endemic element that receives a special emphasis in our book. The seabirds, waders, and other wide-ranging species are also of course included, but the reader should note they are treated more thoroughly in other, specialty guides (examples listed in Selected References section, p. 36).

1.3. THE NEW GUINEA REGION IN CONTEXT

The New Guinea Region is geographically complex. It is a region of two different worlds, of vast lowland plains and high mountains—in a sense these are the Amazon and the Andes of the Pacific. The mainland is dominated by a huge, central cordillera called the Central Ranges extending 1900 km from northwest to southeast across the length of the island, not including the Bird's Head and Neck. To that are added 11 much smaller, outlying ranges that are home to endemic species or subspecies: the Tamrau, Arfak, Fakfak, Kumawa, Wandammen, Van Rees, Foja, Cyclops, North Coastal, Adelbert, and Huon Ranges. The mountain environments and the barriers created by mountains frame the geography of New Guinea. Spreading out from this mountainous framework, and partitioned by it, are the great alluvial basins that support the lowland rainforests. These are aligned into four principal lowland subregions, listed here by size: the Southern Lowlands, the Sepik-Ramu, the Northwestern Lowlands, and the southern lowlands of the Bird's Head and Bird's Neck. Like the mountain subregions, these lowland subregions support their own endemic birds. The reader will find many species' ranges defined by a listing of the mountain groups or lowland basins inhabited. New Guinea also supports extensive coastal mangroves, inland swamp forests, impenetrable karst terrain, and seasonally flooded savannahs. Beyond mainland New Guinea, there lies the island realm, each island or group of islands inhabited by a microcosm of New Guinea birdlife, offering yet more endemic forms.

A number of biogeographic patterns recur when the geography just described is compared with avian distributions, and from these we are able to discern distinct New Guinea bird regions. We will refer to these bird regions frequently in the species accounts and facing page text,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691095639
• ISBN 13: 9780691095639
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zeichner: Anderton John C., Kokay Szabolcs
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 512
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar