Linnaeus named it 'without feet' because trade skins arrived in Europe with the legs removed
Paradisaea apoda, the greater bird-of-paradise — hence the legend that they never landed.
Nature · Birds
Greater bird-of-paradise
Least Concern · New Guinea and the Aru Islands
Paradisaea apoda — Paradisaeidae
The largest member of the genus Paradisaea, a maroon-brown bird of southern New Guinea and the Aru Islands whose males have a yellow head, emerald throat and a vast spray of golden-yellow flank plumes displayed together in canopy leks. Linnaeus named it apoda, meaning 'without feet', because the trade skins reaching Europe had the legs cut off, feeding a legend that the birds floated in the air and never landed. It is also the national bird of Papua New Guinea in stylised form.
How to spot them
- ▸Males: maroon-brown body, yellow crown and nape, iridescent dark emerald throat, and huge lacy yellow flank plumes
- ▸Two long wire-like central tail feathers in the adult male
- ▸Females and immatures are plain maroon-brown with a dark head and no plumes
- ▸Communal canopy lek: several males clap their wings, call and then hang upside down with plumes fanned
- ▸Loud, ringing, far-carrying 'wauk-wauk-wauk' calls from high in the canopy
How to know it
Males clap their wings in a canopy lek, then hang upside down with a cascade of golden flank plumes fanned out
Greater bird-of-paradise display.
A skin from the Aru Islands was among the specimens that helped Alfred Russel Wallace frame his ideas on sexual selection
Greater bird-of-paradise — Wallace collected in the Aru Islands in 1857.
A population introduced to Little Tobago in 1909 to save it from the plume trade survived there into the 1960s
Greater bird-of-paradise on Little Tobago, 'Bird of Paradise Island'.
Its plumes were exported in tens of thousands a year for European and American millinery until the 1920s
Greater bird-of-paradise — the plume trade.
The largest species in its genus, from southern New Guinea and the Aru Islands, and still classed as Least Concern
Greater bird-of-paradise.
Quick-fire facts
- •Male body length about 43 cm excluding plumes; the female is about 35 cm
- •IUCN Red List: Least Concern, though plumes are still taken for ceremonial headdresses
- •Described by Linnaeus in 1758 as Paradisaea apoda, 'the footless bird of paradise'
- •Wallace collected it in the Aru Islands in 1857 and described the lek in The Malay Archipelago (1869)
- •Sir William Ingram released birds on Little Tobago in 1909 as an insurance population; they persisted until about the 1960s, after Hurricane Flora in 1963
- •Papua New Guinea's flag and coat of arms carry a stylised bird-of-paradise, and Raggiana bird-of-paradise is the formally designated national bird
- •There are around 45 species of birds-of-paradise, almost all confined to New Guinea and nearby islands
- •Males are polygynous and take about seven years to acquire full adult plumage
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Alfred Russel Wallace — The Malay Archipelago