Arfak Astrapia
Astrapia nigra
A long-tailed bird of montane forest canopy. Male has much longer tail with iridescent green belly, black chest and small, iridescent blue throat patch. Female is blackish with indistinct barring on the belly. Feeds on fruit and searches for insects on mossy branches and epiphytes. Somewhat similar to Black Sicklebill but Arfak Astrapia lacks the long, curved bill. Call, a relatively low “clup!” that sounds somewhat like banging 2 large stones together.
Identification
The Arfak astrapia is the third largest of its genus, being approximately 76 cm (30 in) long, including the tail. The male has a black head with a bluish-purple sheen, or iridescence, an elongated jet-black nape crests extending up along the sides of the up to the eyes on each side, a shiny, metallic greenish-yellow cape from the mantle up to the nape, very black, dense and elongated upper breast feathers, and an almost exaggeratedly long tail almost two times the length of its body. The female is less appealing, being dark brown over most of its body and a blackish head, and sporting much shorter tail feathers. The female is also exceptionally shorter than the male.<p>Levaillant of France described this bird as L’Incomparable or Incomparable bird-of-paradise.
Taxonomy
The Arfak astrapia was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the birds of paradise in the genus Paradisea (now spelled Paradisaea) and coined the binomial name Paradisea nigra. Gmelin based his description on the "Gorget paradise bird" that had been described in 1782 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Lathan had examined a specimen in the collection of the naturalist Joseph Banks. The type location is the Arfak Mountains in the Bird's Head Peninsula of northwest New Guinea. The Arfak astrapia is now placed in the genus Astrapia that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek astrapios or astrapaios meaning "of lightning". The specific epithet nigra is from Latin niger meaning "black". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
- Scientific name
- Astrapia nigra
- Authority
- (Gmelin, JF, 1788)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Paradisaeidae
- Genus
- Astrapia
Range and habitat
Astrapia nigra is endemic to the Arfak Mountains in Vogelkop Peninsula, West Papua.
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Migration pattern: Resident species.
Conservation
Population trend: stable.
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
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