Introduction

The New Guinea Region

Our region of coverage follows Mayr (1941: vi), who defined the natural region that encompasses the avifauna of New Guinea, naming it the "New Guinea Region." It comprises the great tropical island of New Guinea as well as an array of islands lying on its continental shelf or immediately offshore. This region extends from the equator to latitude 12° south and from longitude 129° east to 155° east; it is 2,800 km long by 750 km wide and supports the largest remaining contiguous tract of old-growth humid tropical forest in the Asia-Pacific (Beehler 1993a). The Region includes the Northwestern Islands (Raja Ampat group) of the far west — Waigeo, Batanta, Salawati, Misool, Kofiau, Gam, Gebe, and Gag; the Aru Islands of the southwest — Wokam, Kobroor, Trangan, and others; the Bay Islands of Geelvink/Cenderawasih Bay — Biak-Supiori, Numfor, Mios Num, and Yapen; Dolak Island of south-central New Guinea (also known as Dolok, Kimaam, Kolepom, Yos Sudarso, or Frederik Hendrik); Daru and Kiwai Islands of eastern south- central New Guinea; islands of the north coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG) — Kairiru, Muschu, Manam, Bagabag, and Karkar; and the Southeastern (Milne Bay) Islands of the far southeast — Goodenough, Fergusson, Normanby, Kiriwina, Kaileuna, Woodlark, Misima, Tagula/Sudest, and Rossel, plus many groups of smaller islands (see the endpapers for a graphic delimitation of the Region).

Politically, the island of New Guinea is bisected at longitude 141° east. To the west is Indonesian New Guinea (comprising Papua and Papua Barat Provinces). To the east of the line is the mainland portion of Papua New Guinea. Although this abrupt north-south boundary line is an artificial product of colonial-era claims, today this line, in effect, separates Asia (to the west) from the Pacific (to the east).

Indonesian New Guinea includes the western half of mainland New Guinea plus the islands of Geelvink (Cenderawasih) Bay, the Aru Islands, and the Raja Ampat Islands — all territory covered in this book. Papua New Guinea encompasses territory in the New Guinea region — the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and the islands of Milne Bay Province, as well as territory outside the Region and not covered in this book — the Bismarck and Admiralty Islands and the northernmost of the Solomon Islands. Thus, much of insular Papua New Guinea is not included in this treatment.

The New Guinea region does not include Seram, the Southeast Islands of Indonesia, the Kai Islands, the Torres Strait Islands, Long and Umboi Islands, New Britain, New Ireland, Manus, or the Solomon Islands. The northern Melanesian avifauna inhabiting these last six entities is admirably treated in Mayr & Diamond (2001) and Dutson (2011).

The postmodern political side of geographic names is problematic — is it Maluku or Moluccas? Nusa Tenggara or Lesser Sundas? Tagula or Sudest? Rossel or Yela? We have tended toward conservatism here (particularly because the main users of this type of work are people interested in the history of ornithology), as the older names have received more use in the literature and are, quite simply, better known and more widely used in the science. Our geographic gazetteer in the back of the book (Appendix) makes an initial attempt to present all the geographic names, so one can locate and identify both the new and old name here, even if only the "old" name appears in the text accounts. Some of the more prominent choices appear in our usage chart at the end of this introductory section.

With regard to seabirds, our treatment includes records within ca. 50 km of the Mainland coastline and ca. 25 km of any fringing New Guinea island. Also included are waters encompassed by embayments (the limit is a straight line between major projecting points on the Mainland). That said, we do not include any territorial waters of Australia (which in the Torres Strait approaches northward to the shores of the New Guinea mainland) or the Solomon Islands. We strongly encourage much additional seabird-watching in New Guinea's waters. These efforts should be timed to coincide with the annual spring and fall movements of these long-distance migrants and mainly should focus on the western and eastern extremities of the Region, where north-south water passages encourage concentrations of the birds where they can bypass the substantial east-west land barrier posed by mountainous mainland New Guinea.

New Guinea in Context

Aside from continental Australia, the only island larger than New Guinea is ice-capped Greenland. Among tropical islands, New Guinea is the largest and highest (it is larger and substantially higher than either Madagascar or Borneo) and still supports tropical glaciers in the far west of its high Central Ranges.

New Guinea is the geographic hub of the southwest Pacific — situated at the heart of an array of tropical island arcs that are home to a wonderful assemblage of bird species featured in this book. Australia lies just to the south. New Guinea and Australia share the Australian plate and thus the same tectonic history — New Guinea is the high, wet, and equatorial sector, whereas continental Australia is the low, dry, and temperate sector. To the west lie the Moluccas (Maluku) and Lesser Sundas (Nusa Tenggara) of Indonesia. To the north and northwest lie the Philippines, Palau, and the Mariana Islands. The Bismarck, Admiralty, Caroline, Marshall, and Gilbert Islands lie to the northeast and east, and the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji to the southeast.

New Guinea supports the Pacific's richest humid-forest avifauna. By contrast, Australia hosts the Pacific's richest savanna and dry-zone avifauna. Both rest atop the Australian continental craton, isolated by deepwater barriers from Sundaland to the west and from the Melanesian islands to the northeast and southeast. Whereas the differences between the avifaunas of New Guinea and Australia are mainly products of their distinct environments, the differences distinguishing New Guinea's avifauna from that of southeast Asia are biogeographic in origin. Wallace's Line, an ancient deepwater barrier, marks the eastern limit of many continental Asian bird lineages, separating the continental avifaunas of southeast Asia from those of Australia–New Guinea. In a similar manner,...