The Maubara Important Bird Area is a 5292 ha tract of land in

East Timor East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...

, a country occupying the eastern end of the island of

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...

in the

Lesser Sunda Islands The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands ( id, Kepulauan Nusa Tenggara, formerly ) are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up t ...

Wallacea Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of mainly Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lo ...

Description

The IBA lies on the northern coast of the island, 37 km west of the national capital,

Dili Dili (Portuguese/Tetum: ''Díli'') is the capital, largest city of East Timor and the second largest city in Timor islands after Kupang (Indonesia). It lies on the northern coast of the island of Timor, in a small area of flat land hemmed in ...

, near the village of

Maubara Maubara is a village in Maubara Subdistrict ( Liquiçá District, East Timor), just west of the city of Liquiçá. Most of the inhabitants speak Tocodede. It lies near the Maubara Important Bird Area, encompassing the small coastal Lake ...

in the

Liquiçá District Liquiçá (Tetum: ''Likisá'') is a coastal city in East Timor, 32 km to the west of Dili, the national capital. Liquiçá is the capital of Liquiçá District. The city has a population of 5,005 inhabitants. History A part of the colo ...

. In elevation it ranges from sea level in the north to about 500 m in the hills to the south. It encompasses the small (8 ha), coastal Lake Maubara, as well as dense stands of ''

Corypha ''Corypha'' (gebang palm, buri palm or talipot palm) is a genus of palms (family Arecaceae), native to India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Guinea and northeastern Australia (Cape York Peninsula, Queensland). They are fan palms (sub ...

'' palm woodland on alluvial soils behind the beach, and intact

tropical dry forest The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest is a habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature and is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. Though these forests occur in climates that are warm year-round, and may receive ...

extending several kilometres inland from the coast.

Birds

The site has been identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

because it supports populations of

bar-necked cuckoo-dove The bar-necked cuckoo-dove, also called the dusky cuckoo-dove was split into the following species in 2016. The name "bar-necked cuckoo-dove" remains valid when used to describe the ''Macropygia magna'' species complex as all of its members have bar ...

pink-headed imperial pigeon The pink-headed imperial pigeon (''Ducula rosacea'') is a species of bird in the family Columbidae found in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical ma ...

s, jonquil parrots, streak-breasted honeyeaters, Timor friarbirds, plain gerygones, fawn-breasted whistlers, green figbirds,

olive-brown oriole Olive-brown oriole has been split into the following species: * Timor oriole, ''Oriolus melanotis'' * Wetar oriole, ''Oriolus finschi'' Birds by common name {{Short pages monitor