Eclectus roratus (Statius Muller, 1776)

Bishop, K. David, 2023, The avifauna of Biak Island, Papua, Indonesia with comments on status, conservation, natural history and taxonomy, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 143 (1), pp. 3-62 : 43

ECLECTUS PARROT Eclectus roratus #

Local name Man Pofu ( Soeparno 1977).

Range E. r. polychloros Biak, Supiori, Numfor, Yapen.

Taxonomy Forshaw (1989) and Juniper & Parr (1998) regarded subspecies biaki as doubtfully distinct from mainland New Guinea populations. Beehler & Pratt (2016) sank biaki in polychloros. Recently, Braun et al. (2017) proposed splitting polychloros.

Status Resident. Obtained by most collectors and seen by virtually all visitors. However, as is true for many Psittaciformes in Indonesian New Guinea, the species has declined markedly since c.1997, especially 2001 when M. Halaouate (in litt. 2021) was able to see still large flocks, but during visits to Biak and Supiori in 2015 and 2016 KDB failed to record it, although M. Halaouate (in litt. 2021) saw 12, mostly males, in north-west Biak in 2019. February 1991: seen on Owi ( Gibbs 1993). M. Halaouate (in litt. 2021) has noted ‘a huge population decrease’ promulgated by illegal trade, with more than 90% of trapped birds bound for Java and Bali via Ambon, Ternate, Manado and Makassar. He considers that a population of perhaps 1,800 birds might still occur on Biak , but this could be too optimistic.