The Smoky Honeyeater is a species of bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 in the honeyeater family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Meliphagidae

Honeyeater

The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family of small to medium sized birds most common in Australia and New Guinea, but also found in New Zealand, the Pacific islands as far east as Samoa and Tonga, and the islands to the north and west of New Guinea known as Wallacea...

. It is one of four species in the genus Melipotes

Melipotes

Melipotes is a genus of bird in the Meliphagidae family. They have an overall dark plumage and extensive yellow, orange or reddish facial skin. The four allopatric species are restricted to the highland forests of New Guinea...

, all closely related and forming a superspecies. After another similar species, the Wattled Smoky Honeyeater

Wattled Smoky Honeyeater

The Wattled Smoky Honeyeater is a species of honeyeater with a sooty-grey plumage and a black bill. The most distinctive feature is arguably the extensive reddish-orange facial skin and pendulous wattle...

, was discovered in 2005 in the Foja Mountains

Foja Mountains

The Foja Mountains are located just north of the Mamberamo river basin in Papua, Indonesia. The mountains rise to , and have 3,000 square kilometres of old growth tropical rainforest in the interior part of the range...

 it has also been called the Common Smoky Honeyeater.

The species is endemic to the island of New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, where it occurs in the Central Ranges across the length of the island as well as two isolated populations on north west and north of the island. There are three subspecies; the nominate race occurs in the East Herzog Mountains and south east New Guinea, M. f. kumawa is restricted to the southern Bomberai Peninsula

Bomberai Peninsula

Bomberai Peninsula is located on the Western New Guinea region at the opposite south of the Bird's Head Peninsula in South East Asia. To the west lies the Sebakor Bay and the south Kamrau Bay. Sabuda island lies off the western tip of the peninsula, which is separated from the mainland by Berau...

 and M. f. goliathi ranges from the Weyland Mountains to the west Herzog mountains.