Accipiter brachyurus is endemic to New Britain and New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. There are only a handful of historic or recent records on New Britain^2,3,4,5,6. It has recently been discovered on New Ireland where it was the commonest (although not very common) raptor in the montane forests¹. Its true distribution is clouded by identification problems with the other Accipter species on New Britain, but it is clearly a localised species occurring at low population-densities.