Common name

Common name : Rasping Bird-of-Paradise.

Range: mountains of the Papuan Peninsula west to at least the Wharton Range, PNG, c. 1200–2000 m a.s.l.

Remarks: Lophorina superba sphinx ( Neumann, 1932) , a subspecies widely accepted today ( Mayr, 1962; Gilliard, 1969; Frith & Beehler, 1998; Beehler & Pratt, 2016), is of enigmatic identity and source. It is known from a single, unprovenanced specimen of questionable sex and is described as having a prevailingly black head with slender white superciliaries, rather reddish back, and an isabelline breast and belly, differing ventrally from minor as niedda does from inopinata. Mayr (1962) speculated that it was from the far southeast of the Papuan Peninsula. Pace Beehler & Pratt (2016: 427) who mis-cited Schodde (1978), this possibility is plausible ( Table 2) if the specimen, distinguished as uniquely large by Frith & Beehler (1998) and Beehler & Pratt (2016), is in fact an immature male mis-sexed as a female (also Gilliard, 1969); Neumann (1932) quoted ‘ ♀ ad. oder ♂ juv.’ in the original description, which is confirmed on one of the German labels on the type, no. 153639 in MCZ (J. Trimble scan). Neumann (1932) recorded getting the specimen through a dealer in Melbourne before World War I. Its only label of that origin is a hand-cut piece of thin cardboard with English print on the back and ‘ Lophorina minor female’ on the front, nothing more (J. Trimble scan). So, the specimen was probably collected in Papua, then an Australian territory of New Guinea, between 1885 when minor was described, and 1914. In Papua during that period, the only montane region explored ornithologically – and it was intense – was the Owen Stanley Range, particularly the region inland from Port Moresby ( Gilliard, 1969: 416–461). This is consistent with the form of the type. Its scan (J. Trimble, personal communication) shows a slightly foxed, medium brown-backed individual with extensively rufous remiges, plain black crown and frons, long thin white post-ocular stripe just reaching the nape, dark black and white speckled malar area and creamy (not isabelline) ventrum. Pace Gilliard (1969: 168) and Frith & Beehler (1998: 349), these traits closely match many specimens of minor from the Owen Stanley Range inland from Port Moresby, in the likely terra typica of minor . Although considerably larger than females of any known population, its wing (137 mm) and tail (91 mm) fit eastern New Guinean males everywhere in size and proportions (data from Frith & Beehler, 1998). The dealer’s labelling of ‘female’, moreover, without any indication of sexing by dissection, may have been assumed, as evidently suspected by Neumann (1932). Available data thus lead us to synonymize sphinx with minor (also Cracraft, 1992).

The type of lehunti Rothschild is characterized by characters intergradient with L. superba addenda .

The English name for this species is drawn from the distinctively rasped territorial and advertising call of the male. Although the call is shared with L. superba , no other bird-of-paradise utters such a hissed, rasping call in advertisement.