The Buru friarbird or black-faced friarbird ( Philemon moluccensis) is a species of bird in the family Meliphagidae.
It is Endemism to the island of Buru in the Maluku Islands, Indonesia.
Its natural are subtropical or tropical moist lowland and subtropical or tropical moist .
Taxonomy
The Buru friarbird was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of
Carl Linnaeus's
Systema Naturae. He placed it with the bee-eaters in the
genus Merops and coined the binomial name
Merops moluccensis.
Gmelin based his description on "Le Polochion" that had been described by the French polymath Comte de Buffon in 1779 and the "Moluccan bee-eater" that had been described by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1782. Latham had examined a specimen belonging to the Leverian Museum in London.
The Buru friarbird is now one of 18 honeyeaters placed in the genus
Friarbird that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. The species is
monotypic: no
subspecies are recognised.
The Buru friarbird was formerly considered to be conspecific with the Tanimbar friarbird ( Philemon plumigenis) with the common name "black-faced friarbird". The Buru friarbird is more similar in appearance to the Seram friarbird ( Philemon subcorniculatus) than it is to the Tanimbar friarbird.
