Wattled Smoky Honeyeater

Wattled Smoky Honeyeater
Conservation status
NE
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Meliphagidae
Genus:	Melipotes
Species:	M. carolae
Binomial name
Melipotes carolae Beehler et al., 2007

The Wattled Smoky Honeyeater (Melipotes carolae) is a species of honeyeater with a sooty-grey plumage and a black bill.[1] The most distinctive feature is arguably the extensive reddish-orange facial skin and pendulous wattle. In other members of the genus Melipotes, these sections only appear reddish when "flushed" and the wattle is smaller.

An Indonesian endemic, this honeyeater was discovered in December 2005. It is found in remote montane forests of Foja Mountains range, Western New Guinea at an altitude over 1,150 metres.

The first bird species found in New Guinea since 1939, the honeyeater was one of over twenty new species discovered by an international team of eleven scientists from Australia, Indonesia and the United States, led by an American ornithologist and Melanesia Conservation International vice-president Bruce Beehler.

The bird is named after the wife of Bruce Beehler, Carol Beehler.[2]

Melipotes carolae is depicted in Indonesian stamps issued on November 6, 2006 along with the Golden-fronted Bowerbird, and two palm species native to Mamberamo, Licuala arbuscula and Livistona mamberamoensis.

References

• Conservation International: Press Releases
• National Geographic article
• BBC News
• Beehler, B., D. Prawiradilaga, Y. de Fretes, & N. Kemp (2007). A new species of smoky honeyeater (Meliphagidae: Melipotes) from western New Guinea. The Auk 124(3): 1000-1009.