New Guinea Birding Tours

The island of New Guinea has an interesting shape which is often compared to that of a bird-of-paradise! The northwest of the island is known as the Bird’s Head (or Vogelkop or Kepala Burung in Dutch and Indonesian respectively) Peninsula. The southeast of the island, the Papuan Peninsula, is also known as the Bird’s Tail Peninsula. The island is dominated by a 1,000 mile-long (1,600 kilometer) mountain chain running east-west from the ‘Bird’s Head’ to the ‘Bird’s Tail’. There are many high mountains of over 13,100 feet (4,000 meters) with the highest being Puncak Jaya (Carstensz Pyramid) at 16,024 feet (4,884 meters). Most of New Guinea (excluding the high elevation areas) are of a warm humid climate with a degree of seasonal variation due to the monsoon season. New Guinea supports a huge number of different ecosystems, from glacial, montane rainforests, and alpine tundra in the mountains to lowland rainforest, mangroves (some of the largest mangrove forests in the world), savanna, and wetlands in the lowlands, as well as some of the richest coral reefs anywhere in the world.

Following International Ornithological Congress (IOC) taxonomy, v10.2 (September 2020), the island of New Guinea is considered to have a bird list of 858 bird species, with a staggering 356 endemic birds (including several endemic families, some monotypic), and 33 globally threatened species. There are many stupendous birds in New Guinea, such as paradise kingfishers, kingfishers, pittas, fruit doves, honeyeaters, whistlers, parrots, jewel-babblers, bowerbirds, melampittas, satinbirds, ifrit, ploughbill, berryhunter, Australasian robins, and pitohuis. However, there is one family that stands head and shoulders above the rest, the birds-of-paradise. New Guinea is home to 39 of the world’s 43 species of birds-of-paradise, these are some of the best-looking, unique, and most highly sought-after birds on the planet and is definitely one of the main draws for world birders.

We have two extremely exciting tours covering New Guinea:

Papua New Guinea: Birding Attenborough’s Paradise

This PNG birding tour searches for over half of the birds-of-paradise found in New Guinea. We will look for 20 species of bird-of-paradise, such as Blue Bird-of-paradise, King of Saxony Bird-of-paradise, Princess Stephanie’s Astrapia, Ribbon-tailed Astrapia, Queen Carola’s Parotia, Brown Sicklebill, Twelve-wired Bird-of-paradise, Raggiana Bird-of-paradise (the national bird of PNG), and numerous others. Additionally, we will seek Wattled Ploughbill, Blue-capped Ifrit, Mottled Berryhunter, Greater Melampitta, Loria’s Satinbird, Papuan Pitta, Sclater’s Crowned Pigeon, Flame Bowerbird, Shovel-billed Kookaburra, Brown-headed Paradise Kingfisher, Papuan Eagle, Blue Jewel-babbler, and many more. This is definitely a trip of a lifetime with more wonderful birds than you can imagine, or we can list here. See our PNG blog post here for more discussion of this great tour or click the link above to see the detailed itinerary.

Indonesia: West Papua – Birds-of-paradise and Endemics of the Arfaks and Waigeo

This exiting, short, small-group, West Papua birding tour complements the above tour with a different and large set of birds-of-paradise (up to 15 species possible on this tour), with such dream birds as Wilson’s Bird-of-paradise, Red Bird-of-paradise (both endemic to the island of Waigeo – Wilson’s is considered one of the best-looking birds in the world by many people), King Bird-of-paradise, Black Sicklebill, Arfak Astrapia, Long-tailed Paradigalla, Crescent-caped Lophorina (formerly Superb Bird-of-paradise), Western Parotia, Trumpet Manucode, and Lesser Bird-of-paradise (along with many more). Other quality birds possible on this tour include Common Paradise Kingfisher, Red-breasted Paradise Kingfisher, Western Crowned Pigeon, Vogelkop Bowerbird, Masked Bowerbird, Arfak Catbird, Spotted Jewel-babbler, Lesser Melampitta, Pesquet’s (New Guinea Vulturine) Parrot, White-striped Forest Rail, Mottled Berryhunter, Papuan Pitta, Blue-black Kingfisher, and lots more! Full details at the link above.