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11:32C'est parti !
11:58They look at first sight like wings, but they're not wings, the wings are down here.
12:03They're just ornamental plumes, and there are more ornamental plumes down here.
12:07So, what did the bird do with these in life?
12:11This is a mid-19th century artist's answer, and it's wildly inaccurate.
12:20The sickle bill actually displays like this.
12:26It takes him a little time to work up to his full display posture.
12:40There.
12:43He lifts up those feathery tufts on his shoulders and holds them around his head so that he hardly looks
12:49like a bird at all.
12:54And he repeats the performance on the same display post up to five times every morning.
13:05It wasn't until 300 years after Europeans saw the first skins that anyone actually saw a bird of paradise displaying
13:14in the wild.
13:16And the person who did so was the British explorer Alfred Russell Wallace, who, along with Darwin, first proposed the
13:24theory of evolution by natural selection.
13:28Alfred Russell Wallace was a great naturalist and scientist, but he was not a wealthy man.
13:35He earned his living by going to the tropics and collecting insects and birds and sending them back for sale
13:42to wealthy collectors and to museums.
13:45And he was obsessed with birds of paradise.
13:49In 1854, he set off for New Guinea, and eventually he became the first European ever to see birds of
13:58paradise display.
13:59Here is his description of that site.
14:05On one of these trees, a dozen or twenty full-plumaged male birds assemble together, raise up their wings, stretch
14:13out their necks and elevate their exquisite plumes, keeping them in a continual vibration.
14:24At the time of excitement, the wings are raised vertically over the back, the head is bent down and stretched
14:30out,
14:30and the long plumes are raised up and expanded, till they form two magnificent golden fangs.
14:45Wallace's description amazed the world, and his book, The Travels in the Malay Archipelago, went on to become one of
14:53the great best-selling travel books of the 19th century.
14:57I myself read it when I was about nine or ten, and the frontispiece to the second volume fascinated me.
15:06Here are the birds, in display.
15:09And I yearned to go off and see such a sight for myself.
15:21It was on that first trip to New Guinea in 1957, for a television series called ZooQuest, that I got
15:28my chance.
15:34During the first month, we saw plenty of plumes of birds of paradise on headdresses, but none on the living
15:41birds.
15:41At just one syncsin, I estimated that there were 20,000 bird skins on display.
15:48It seemed to me unlikely that we were going to find many birds of paradise alive around here.
15:56So we decided to travel somewhere further afield, where there were fewer people, in order to find the living birds.
16:05We went to the north, to a valley that was then quite unexplored and uncontrolled territory, as they called it
16:13at the time,
16:14where the people were really still living in the Stone Age, making stone axes like this.
16:19And we had to cross rivers with locally made suspension bridges, like this one, or even had to wade our
16:28way across.
16:28And we had a hundred porters carrying everything we needed, food, gifts, cakes of salt, that sort of thing.
16:36But eventually, we did find the birds.
16:43The valley was throbbing with calls of Count Raj's paradise birds, for as far as we knew,
16:49no one had ever filmed the courtship dance of these birds of paradise in the wild.
16:53And this was to be our lucky day.
16:57We could see his gorgeous red plumes hanging from beneath his wings.
17:03The plumes which make him so coveted and so desirable a prize for all the people hereabouts.
17:11And then suddenly, in a frenzy of excitement, he threw his ruby plumes above his head, shrieking with excitement.
17:20Our film, even if it was in black and white and rather fuzzy,
17:24was the first record of a wild bird of paradise in display,
17:28and showed exactly how he erected his plumes.
17:36And this skin, which I found in the Paris flea market some years ago,
17:40is of the bird that we filmed in black and white.
17:44And here you can see how wonderfully rich its plumage was.
17:48This is a trade skin, just as the people prepare it in New Guinea,
17:51without any legs and without any wings.
17:56Both have been removed to emphasise the glory of these plumes.
18:02After ten minutes, he executed a final flutter and flew to another branch.
18:09But this was only a single bird in display.
18:17It was another 40 years before I saw the group display of the larger and more impressive species,
18:24the greater bird of paradise, that Wallace had described.
18:31The birds are in another emergent tree, just like this one,
18:36and I've got an absolutely clear view of them.
18:41This, at last, is Wallace's picture come to life.
18:53Wallace described the display very accurately, as you would expect,
18:57but he didn't understand why the birds were behaving like this in the group.
19:08So, even 300 years after the discovery of these birds,
19:13the purpose of their displays still wasn't properly understood.
19:20And it wasn't just the greater bird of paradise, the perplexed naturalists.
19:28The second species of bird of paradise to arrive in Europe at the end of the 16th century
19:34appeared to be an even more bizarre-looking creature.
19:38It still had a pair of golden plumes sprouting from its flanks
19:42to justify it being called a bird of paradise.
19:46It seems to have been painted soon after its arrival,
19:49as the gold colour fades with time.
19:52And, like the first ones, it had no wings or legs,
19:56but it did have some extra, rather mysterious, adornments.
20:05This is it.
20:06It's called the 12-wired bird of paradise.
20:10That's because it has thin, naked quills
20:13sprouting from the tail,
20:15six on one side, six on the other.
20:18What were such things used for?
20:21Some people suggested that it wasn't natural that they were curling up this way,
20:26that it happened because of the way the bird was packed.
20:29Others suggested that maybe it roosted
20:32by hanging from them upside down.
20:36Nobody had any idea.
20:39In the years that followed,
20:41more specimens of this bird appeared,
20:43and other artists made a somewhat better job of depicting it.
20:54But the function of those strange 12-wires remained a mystery.
21:01It was only on my second trip to New Guinea in 1997,
21:06when we filmed the bizarre courtship of this bird
21:08for the very first time,
21:10that we found the answer.
21:18Courtship seems to be some kind of game,
21:20a variation of I'm the king of the castle, perhaps,
21:24only with a very special prize.
21:39He deliberately brushed her face with his real quills.
21:46He's doing it again.
21:47It seems that she prefers to be seduced
21:50not by visual quills,
21:52but by tactile ones.
21:55Courtship seems to be a very special prize.
21:58It may be an odd technique,
22:00but it works.
22:03So, it took 400 years
22:06from the arrival of the first skin of the 12-wired bird
22:09to actually record its courtship ritual
22:12and finally solve the mystery
22:14of the function of its peculiar adornments.
22:18But there's another species whose display is perhaps the hardest of all to interpret from its skin.
22:25It doesn't so much flaunt its feathers
22:27as use them to entirely transform itself.
22:33This is the superb bird-of-paradise, and it has this wonderful shield on its breast.
22:41This blue colour isn't pigment, it's reflected light, like that that comes from a thin film of oil.
22:50So it changes according to how you view it.
22:54But that's not its only decoration.
22:56On its back, it has a kind of cape.
23:00These aren't wings, they're just feathers.
23:04How would the bird have displayed that?
23:08That was the problem facing 19th century bird illustrators.
23:17Artists did their best to work out how the birds showed off their ornaments.
23:26This version shows the superb bird's colours more or less correctly,
23:32but otherwise, it's nowhere near the truth.
23:37It wasn't until the late 20th century
23:40that ornithologists managed to work out
23:42just how the superb bird uses its feathers to transform itself.
23:47These drawings by the Australian artist Bill Cooper
23:51show just how it does it.
23:53It uses these long black feathers which form a cape on its back
23:57and brings them forward to form a funnel.
24:01Then the green, iridescent green breast shield
24:05forms the base of the funnel
24:07and in the far depths
24:08there appear to be two eyes staring at you.
24:12In fact, they're not even eyes at all.
24:14They're white spots on its head.
24:18I think if in the 19th century
24:21any artists had suggested that that's what the bird did,
24:24he really would have been ridiculed.
24:27But no drawing can completely capture
24:31the extraordinary way the superb bird
24:34transforms itself in display.
24:39You just have to see the living bird.
24:50The rhythmic clicks are made by fricking the wing feathers.
25:05In 1996, I was able to watch Bill Cooper at work
25:09as he painted another bird of paradise,
25:12a Victoria Riflebird.
25:18This is one of the few birds of paradise
25:21that is found outside New Guinea or its offshore islands.
25:24It lives in Australia, in northern Queensland,
25:27where Bill Cooper also has his home
25:29in an unspoiled patch of rainforest.
25:32Come on, boy.
25:33Come on.
25:33Come on, gorgeous.
25:34Come on.
25:36Oh, look at that colour.
25:37Here he comes.
25:39Come on.
25:49That was lovely.
25:54As a young man,
25:55Bill Cooper travelled through some of the wildest parts
25:58of New Guinea
25:59watching and painting the birds.
26:01It was Count Raj's that he encountered first,
26:04as I had done.
26:07It turned and faced the female
26:09and the male started shuffling towards her
26:12and he puffed out all his chestnuts,
26:14which I often wondered what that was for,
26:16but he fluffed them out
26:17and formed a great pom-pom
26:18through which his beak was protruding.
26:20It was a great display.
26:27Bill Cooper, to my mind anyway,
26:30is the greatest of all bird-of-paradise illustrators.
26:35And this one of the bluebird in display
26:37is particularly successful.
26:39He's caught this wonderful intensity of blue
26:41as the bird hangs upside down.
26:44But what even Bill Cooper can't do
26:46is to show that the male bluebird,
26:48as he hangs like this,
26:50actually throbs this pattern here,
26:53making a noise at the same time,
26:56unlike some electronic equipment that's gone wrong.
27:12Images of birds-of-paradise
27:14have become increasingly accurate
27:16since those first attempts.
27:22The plumed birds in particular
27:25that dance high in the trees
27:26became better known scientifically
27:28as explorers and naturalists
27:31travelled more widely
27:32through New Guinea's dense forests.
27:36However, a few species display
27:38not up in the branches,
27:41but on the ground.
27:43They are more difficult to observe.
27:47But we did manage to film one of them in display
27:50for the very first time
27:51on my trip in 1997.
27:55I've come to the island of Batanta.
27:58It has its own species of bird-of-paradise
28:01that evolved here and lives nowhere else.
28:04And one way of trying to get a look at it
28:06is to put some leaves on this arena
28:11because this bird is meticulously tidy.
28:17There he is.
28:22Wilson's bird-of-paradise.
28:24He's got his own fashion gimmick.
28:27The bald look.
28:33There goes the first of the leaves that I dropped.
28:37He's really quite small.
28:39Only the size of a starling.
28:52That looks like a female.
29:22He's clearly not much of a dancer,
29:24but with a costume like that,
29:26who would need to be?
29:35What an amazing bird.
29:38I've seen lots of coloured illustrations of them.
29:41I've seen mounted specimens in museums,
29:43but nothing has prepared me
29:45for the splendour of this wonderful thing.
29:50Although Wilson's bird is very spectacular,
29:54there are other ground-leaving species
29:56with much more complex dances.
30:02in 1876,
30:05an Italian explorer, Luigi D'Albertis,
30:07spent many months charting the territory
30:10of the then virtually unknown interior of New Guinea.
30:17During one of his excursions through the forest,
30:20his local guide pointed to a bird sitting on a perch
30:23in a small clearing.
30:28Dalbertis' first reaction was to shoot and skin the bird,
30:32as he had done with every other specimen that he had collected.
30:35And he was just about to pull the trigger
30:38when the local man was with him,
30:40put his hand on his arm and said,
30:43wait.
30:44And then Dalbertis became the first European ever to see the display of the Perote bird of paradise.
30:51This is how he describes it in his book.
30:57The bird spread and contracted the long feathers on his sides in a way that made him appear now larger,
31:03and again smaller than his real size.
31:07And jumping first on one side and then on the other,
31:10he placed himself proudly in an attitude of combat,
31:14as though he imagined himself fighting with an invisible foe.
31:19All this time, he was uttering a curious note,
31:23as though calling on someone to admire his beauty,
31:27or perhaps challenging an enemy.
31:29The deep silence of the forest was stirred by the echoes of his voice.
31:38And then he pressed the trigger and shot it.
31:49When the smoke cleared away,
31:50a black object lying in the middle of the glade
31:53showed me that I had not missed my mark.
31:58And full of joy, I ran to possess myself of my prey.
32:02But as I drew near, my courage failed me.
32:06I could not stretch forth my hand.
32:09And full of remorse, I said to myself,
32:12Man is indeed cruel.
32:14The poor creature was full of happiness.
32:17One flash from a gun, and all his joy is past.
32:29Now, filmmakers like Paul Stewart hunt the birds,
32:34not with guns, but cameras.
32:36Using the latest ultra-sensitive filming equipment,
32:40he captured the Perotia's behaviour in meticulous detail.
32:45The key to filming them is for them to have no idea that you're there.
32:51And the best way to achieve that is to build a hide with the help of the local people.
32:58You go in before first light, you leave after dusk,
33:03and in between, you are as silent as you humanly can be.
33:10In 2005, he spent five weeks trying to film Law's Perotia in action.
33:17Eventually, he saw the male start to clear his display area or court.
33:25And then he took a piece of damp leaf and was shining the branch
33:30that the female will first come into to judge his display.
33:36It was as if the male was directing her to a specific vantage point.
33:42Once he had polished the branch to his satisfaction, he began his display.
33:54He had a little bow tie, almost, of iridescent feathers,
33:59but rather like a sort of a comedy bow tie.
34:02This thing would flip up and down while he was displaying.
34:06Now, we thought that's making a nice flash at ground level.
34:11We should have suspected there was more to it.
34:15In fact, he was looking at and filming the bird from the wrong angle.
34:20It took another film crew to reveal why.
34:27An American team decided to try and film every single one
34:32of the 39 known species of birds of paradise.
34:41Edwin Scholes and Tim Lehman, from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology,
34:46spent 10 years crisscrossing New Guinea in search of these birds.
34:55There are four species of parotia, and in one,
35:00Warren's parotia, they discovered something new.
35:06They placed the camera above the arena of a displaying male,
35:11and so observed his dance from a female's point of view.
35:17And it showed two details of the male's performance that can only be seen from above.
35:26The pendants on his head, seen this way, form a vibrating arc around his skirt.
35:35Then, iridescent lights appear to flash across the top of his head,
35:40something you just can't see from the side.
35:49And the bow tie of iridescent feathers has very much more impact from above.
36:03It's now known how the parotia breast shield changes colour.
36:08The feathers are arranged so they overlap like scales.
36:13And each feather has side filaments, each of which has three different reflectors.
36:19one that reflects an orange-yellow colour, and two that reflect blue.
36:25And these reflectors are at an angle to one another.
36:28So as the bird moves, the breast shield appears to change colour, like this.
36:38And the parotia family held yet more secrets,
36:42as Ed Scholes and Tim Lehman revealed when they visited me in Bristol.
36:46Nice to meet you.
36:47Where are we going to sit?
36:48We're right here.
36:49OK.
36:51Well, I can't wait to see this stuff.
36:54They had filmed the courtship display of the Queen Carol as parotia,
36:58that I had never seen before.
37:01I can immediately see it's different, with those white on the flanks.
37:06There's a female there after the...
37:08Oh, yeah. Oh, she's much lighter.
37:10There's another one on the back looking.
37:12Oh, yes, there's another one. Three females now.
37:15Four.
37:16Yeah, they keep coming.
37:17Look at that. Look at it. How intense they are.
37:21Ah, starting.
37:21You see this figure eight, where he's bouncing back and forth and fluttering his wings.
37:26If you were to trace the feathers on the back of his head there, if you were to slow it
37:29down and look at it, it makes a perfect figure eight.
37:31And they're all almost perched above the display.
37:34That's right.
37:35Really?
37:49Yeah.
37:50Yeah.
37:50And there he's... see this hop and shake, hop and shake.
37:54And he's transformed himself into this ballerina-like skirt shape.
37:57And he's positioning himself until he gets right underneath the female.
38:01He goes into that dramatic pause and all the females are leaning over looking at him.
38:04And notice, as soon as he starts moving, they kind of relax and move back as well.
38:12Go for it, boy.
38:15He eventually mated with all six of those females.
38:20This was the most successful individual bird of paradise that we ever saw.
38:24This male was the king of them all.
38:27This pause is terrific, isn't it?
38:31Come on, girls.
38:33This is him.
38:42By 2011, Tim and Ed, after 18 separate expeditions to New Guinea,
38:49had succeeded in filming every known species of bird of paradise in the wild.
38:59We have come a long way from those first attempts to make drawings of the birds,
39:05which had to be based on no more than their shriveled skins.
39:11Then came paintings.
39:13And finally, film of them, eventually in colour.
39:19But, of course, in the mid-19th century, the only way to see a living bird
39:23was to travel 8,000 miles to New Guinea
39:26because nobody had managed to bring one back to Europe alive.
39:33It was Alfred Russell Wallace, who once again was the pioneer.
39:38In 1862, he succeeded in bringing back to England two living birds of paradise.
39:45The Zoological Society of London, the London Zoo, gave him £300 for them,
39:51an astonishing figure worth about £30,000 today.
39:55They were the first birds of paradise to be put on display here,
40:00and they were soon talk of the time.
40:07In 1957, I set off for New Guinea, not only to film the birds,
40:12but on behalf of the London Zoo, to try and bring some back alive.
40:22But although we managed to film Count Raj's bird, I wasn't able to catch any.
40:28But then I met a great naturalist and explorer who had settled in the Wagyi Valley
40:33and had built aviaries in which he kept many of the species.
40:37His name was Fred Shawmeyer.
40:42I found Fred with Bob, his hornbill.
40:44Fred has been collecting animals all his life.
40:47And in New Guinea alone, he's discovered five birds new to science,
40:51including one bird of paradise.
40:53Fred gave me 13 birds of paradise of 10 different species.
41:03And then I set out with them on the five-week journey back to London.
41:11And they ended up here in the old birdhouse in the London Zoo.
41:33It was quite a difficult journey.
41:35We had to charter a little plane to take us to the island port of Rabaul,
41:40off the eastern end of New Guinea.
41:42And there we found an old cargo ship that ploughed its way across the South China Sea to Hong Kong.
41:50Every day, of course, they had to be fed and cleaned.
41:54And we had plenty of fruit.
41:56But we discovered, as Wallace had, that what the birds really loved was cockroaches.
42:01And there were plenty of those to be found in the ship's kitchens.
42:07Then, from Hong Kong, we got a freight plane back to London.
42:13This big aviary here contains several of the birds of paradise which we brought back.
42:19That big one there on the left is Princess Stephanie's bird of paradise.
42:24It's one of the largest of the birds of paradise.
42:29And here's one of the smallest.
42:31The king bird of paradise, which is only a little larger than a robin.
42:35It's a wonderful little bird.
42:41Birds of paradise haven't been seen here in London Zoo since 1973.
42:45But that's because it's now illegal to export the living birds from New Guinea.
42:50Nonetheless, there are just a very, very few places in the world where captive bred ones can be seen.
43:04I am heading for one of them in an unlikely location in the Middle East.
43:14Thousands of miles away from the birds of paradise natural home.
43:21Where a sanctuary has been built especially for them by a 21st century royal collector.
43:28Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed bin Ali Al Thani.
43:48Here in the middle of the desert of Qatar.
43:52A breeding centre has been created for rare birds and animals from all over the world.
44:01The Sheikh has built Al Wabra, a state-of-the-art breeding facility.
44:09There we are. What about that?
44:12Here at Al Wabra, they're experts at caring for exotic birds like these wonderful hyacinth macaws,
44:21the largest of all flying parrots and very, very beautiful.
44:34They also maintain the largest captive breeding group in the world of birds of paradise with over 90 birds.
44:47They get the best possible care with particular attention being paid to their nutrition.
44:57They consume 160 kilos of papaya a week.
45:04And their favourite insect food is mealworms.
45:11Twice a day, freshly made, the meals are delivered to each of the 90 birds individually.
45:22Curator Simon Matthews is in charge of the birds and his aim is to understand them better
45:28and to improve their breeding success still further.
45:33Because the eggs are so valuable, Simon removes them from the nests to incubate them artificially.
45:44This is a very special and precious chick.
45:49It's a young, greater bird of paradise and one of the very, very few that has been reared in captivity.
45:56And Simon is now giving it one of its regular feeds.
46:03He has to feed it every two hours, up to nine times a day, for nearly 20 days.
46:11He whistles to attract its attention.
46:16It's kept in an incubator for three weeks.
46:23But the most difficult part of the breeding process in captivity is getting the birds to mate without injuring one
46:30another.
46:32In the wild, male plume birds form necks, as in Wallace's picture,
46:37where many males gather to show off their plumes to visiting females.
46:44The female then chooses the male she admires the most.
46:52Mates with him, but then quickly leaves, avoiding the aggression that the males often show during mating.
47:00The difficulty for Simon is to ensure that the birds behave in the same way in captivity.
47:06To protect the females, he keeps the sexes separately and in alternate cages.
47:12He watches the female to see which side of her enclosure she spends most of her time,
47:17which suggests to him which of the two males she prefers.
47:24Once she appears to have made her choice, he opens a hatch.
47:29And then she flies in to briefly visit her chosen partner.
47:35Although courtship has been well documented in the wild, few people have ever witnessed the birds nesting.
47:45This is something I have never ever seen before.
47:50I've been so fascinated by the beauty and drama and glamour of the males with their splendid plumage and
47:56lancings that I've never spent time looking for the nest of the female.
48:00And it's very unobtrusive and very ordinary looking.
48:05It looks as though it might even have been made by a blackbird.
48:08She makes it entirely by herself.
48:11In it, she lays her one single egg, which you'll rear entirely by herself.
48:18Most other species of birds work together as pairs, not only to make a nest,
48:23but to collect all the food needed to rear the young.
48:28And that difference is important in understanding why birds of paradise behave in the way they do.
48:37It's the fact that the female takes on the laborious business of caring for the young by herself
48:42that is the clue as to why the males have evolved such extravagant plumes.
48:51Over the years, many naturalists have puzzled over these fantastic plumes.
48:57Why should this one family of birds take and feather ornaments to such extreme lengths?
49:03And surely having plumes like this must make it more difficult to fly and therefore make a bird more vulnerable
49:11to predators.
49:12That certainly mystified Wallace.
49:15He described the males' displays as being nothing more than playing or dancing.
49:23But their real purpose is much more important than that.
49:31This is a female king bird of paradise.
49:36And you see, she's very drab.
49:39Nothing like the glorious male.
49:46And it was Charles Darwin who understood the important part that she plays in the evolution of birds of paradise.
49:55Because it's she who selects a male for the beauty of his plumage.
50:03And that, over many, many, many generations, has led to the glories of the males.
50:13Darwin called the process in which a female chooses a mate based on his physical appearance, sexual selection.
50:20And the great variety of male ornaments has evolved simply because the females of the species
50:25have developed a preference for a particular kind of plume or colour.
50:32This trait then, over many generations, becomes more and more exaggerated until eventually it can reach almost absurd extremes.
50:45The two magnificent long white tail feathers of the ribbon-tailed bird of paradise evolved because the female ribbon-tails
50:56happen to like long white tail feathers.
51:03They are four or five times the length of the bird's body, the longest tail feathers in proportion to body
51:10size of any bird.
51:14The remarkable thing is that all these plumes, pennants and capes have evolved from simple feathers.
51:22Of course, they no longer serve the original function of feathers, to keep a bird warm or to help it
51:28to fly.
51:29Indeed, if anything, they are an impediment to flight.
51:32Their only purpose is to impress the females.
51:44And it's not only birds that find such plumes irresistible.
52:03The people of New Guinea have always been well aware of the biological purpose of these extravagant ornaments.
52:10And when a tribesman puts on gorgeous plumes and feathers and displays them in dances,
52:15he's using them for the same purpose, to display his desirability, so a lady might select him.
52:31To prepare the skins and plumes, New Guinea men still carefully remove the fleshy legs and wings
52:38to reduce the likelihood of insect attack and to better display the plumes.
52:45So, the reason it was believed the birds had no legs
52:49was because they had been removed before the skins ever left New Guinea.
53:06But why has this particular family of birds been able to take their ornaments and displays to such great extremes?
53:21The answer lies in the nature of New Guinea itself.
53:25The island is a relatively new one, having been pushed up from the bottom of the sea
53:31a mere 10 million years ago, recently in geological time.
53:35So few land-living mammals have managed to colonize it, and most of those are harmless to birds.
53:43Echidnas, that live largely on worms.
53:48And a kind of kangaroo that bizarrely clambers around in trees eating leaves.
53:59What's more, the lush, wet rainforests are rich all the year round in sugary fruits.
54:08And crucially, because the birds enjoy such a plentiful energy-rich food supply,
54:13a female is able to raise her chick entirely by herself.
54:22And that frees the males to spend a lot of time and energy producing extravagant ornaments
54:27and spectacular displays.
54:32So fruit, that plays such a significant role in the biblical view of paradise,
54:38has also created a paradise for these birds.
54:43Perhaps the name is apt after all.
54:48It's now known that the complexity of a bird-of-paradise display does not come entirely naturally,
54:55as Ed Scholes has recently observed in young male rifle birds.
55:00They start spending more and more time practicing their displays,
55:03and rifle birds, of course, they're using their wings and moving them back and forth,
55:07creating this interesting shape.
55:15Taking a turn at being the male doing the practices,
55:19and the other one is taking the role of the female, and then they alternate.
55:22And sometimes they're going on like this for hours and getting very carried away.
55:28But when an adult male turns up, he sends them on their way.
55:35And it's not only rifle birds that have to learn to dance.
55:40Young male parotias start visiting display courts when they're three years old,
55:45before they develop the black plumage of the adult.
55:49And they use this time to practice their dance moves.
56:03It will be several more years before this one will be taken seriously by a female.
56:08It makes them look like a teenager kind of strutting his stuff in front of the mirror
56:13when he's not quite fully developed yet.
56:27For five centuries, birds of paradise have fascinated explorers and naturalists,
56:32artists and collectors.
56:37So it was a very special moment for me to get so close when,
56:42because he had been hand-reared, this male bird of paradise actually began to court me.
56:51This surely is one of the great wonders of the natural world,
56:56just as Magellan sailors said it was 500 years ago,
57:02even though, in fact, the bird does have legs.
57:10The displays of the birds of paradise have at last been recorded both on canvas
57:16and on screen in all their exquisite detail and complexity.
57:27Now, at last, we understand that it is the rich character of their island home
57:33that has allowed the birds to evolve in the ways that they have.
57:42And it's the female's preference for particular patterns, colours and displays
57:47that have led to the male's astounding finery,
57:51in the way, making them surely among the most stunning and glamorous birds on earth.
57:57that we continue.
58:26And for all the music is...
58:37Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
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