The Wilson's Bird of Paradise , Cicinnurus respublica
An Introduction for an Unlikely Enthusiast
Encounter with the Wilson's Bird of Paradise
by Leah Hope Sindel 2013
Bird-watching has been an unexpected delight which I discovered only recently, by a very fortunate chance after a strange encounter with an
eccentric old man at the table next to mine.
For those of you unfamiliar with the pastime, you should know that, similar to scuba diving, bird-watching it is essentially purposeless – you do not catch, chase, tag or measure the birds or the fish, you simply look. The ability to find gratification in standing still and looking is a trait I admire in many birdwatchers I have observed, and I have met many characters whom I enjoy observing almost as much as the birds themselves, for “twitchers” are
an interesting breed. In the numerous birding excursions we have undertaken since our time in Raja Ampat, my partner and I are usually the youngest people there by approximately 20 – 30 years, and usually the least eccentric by a long shot.
To a rational observer it might seem odd that the old lady woman before me is gasping for air, making faint squeaking sounds and half falling out of the long boat because a Rhyticeros plicatus has flown overhead; or, on another occasion, that a charming old Indian man is rocking his head back and forth, raising his palms up and down murmuring “Divine, Divine, Divine” as he stumbles over the pebbles of a forest creek, listening to the fruit doves coo above him. I once knew an extraordinarily determined woman who hurt her ankle on the ascent to a birding site, but stubbornly did not inform the guide, lest he think her too frail to continue – she had a wonderful encounter with the birds, and a week later when back in the UK, passed the time happily in the hospital ward, loudly insisting that all the bemused nurses and doctors look at her photographs and watch her footage of the bird; it turned out she had broken her ankle. I never once saw her smile fade or heard her happy chatter cease, the entire trip.
Of course, I do not mean to imply that all bird watching enthusiasts ,or "twitchers", are eccentric and elderly. I personally have not yet reached my forties; I rarely hyperventilate or loose my balance in the boat; and there has been more than one occasion when, surrounded by mud and mosquitoes, sweating and itching, with a sore back and a cranky disposition from the 4 am wake up, I have silently thought – What exactly am I doing here? But then, at the first glimpse of the elusive bird, this feeling disappears and is replaced with instant, indescribable exhilaration.
When my partner and I first took over the management of a well-known dive resort in Raja Ampat, we were consumed with a passion to dive every free chance we had. We were extremely busy, but in a constant state of exhilaration at our new surroundings. Although the principal focus of the place was diving, the resort also offered bird watching tours to a site on a nearby island. We had been mildly interested to learn about this from the couple who oversaw the activities and excursions, but had not yet had time to devote much of our attention to it. One evening, not long after we had arrived on the island, we were sitting and enjoying dinner in the open air restaurant. We soon became mildly distracted by one of our fellow diners. The man had a white moustache, spectacles, and a heavy German accent. He was thoroughly sunburned and covered in scratches, with a particularly large scrape on his shins which he happily displayed to anyone whose eyes rested on it for a split-second, accompanied by a triumphant explanation. Thorn vines! Tripped over them and fell Vlonk! on my face! He beamed. But a small price to pay for seeing the bird! At which point he digressed into a lengthy and highly animate description of The Bird, which involved a great deal of gesticulation and, sometimes, an out-of-seat display which nearly resulted in the toppling over of his water glass. Evidently, it had been a thoroughly enjoyable excursion.
I chuckled at this colourful character, and began to wonder if a sighting of The Bird was all he made it out to be. It had certainly never occurred to me to associate such a level of excitement to a fleeting encounter with a small winged animal.
I had read and loved Wallace’s, and now recalled with interest the passages about the Birds of Paradise.I had since learned that there are 39 species of Paradise Birds, most of whom inhabit the island of New Guinea and its surrounding islets, with other species found in various Indonesian islands & some parts of Australia.
Paradise Birds are, of course, most famed for their flamboyant feathery apparel, their bizarre and absurd dances, and for the impressive lengths which they will go to attract a female (for it is the males that flout the superlative colourings and perform the dances – the females are generally more dull-coloured and less remarkable).
The Wilson's Bird of Paradise, whom I soon learned was the remarkable creature that lived 'next door' to the resort, could be said to be one of the more uncommon species. The range of their habitat is so small, limited to a few patches of forest on the West Papuan island of Batanta, and another island further north called Waigeo. But sparse as their populations are, the birds can still be seen by those who know where to find them, and the happy gesticulations of the man at the next table had me feeling inspired.
I decided that I could wait no longer to see what it was all about. I arranged to meet the guides at 4.45 am on the front jetty, with a light sweater and long pants – I had been forewarned that the path to the site of the Wilson's Bird of Paradise was steep, slippery, muddy, rocky and that actually, there was no path.
The air was surprisingly chilly. As the boat pulled away from the electric-lit dock and we were surrounded by darkness, I was struck by the extraordinary amount of phosphorescent algae in the water – our wake trailed behind us, vivid green and glowing. As the sky became grey, we made out the maze of mangrove forest on either side of us, tall and dense, with a knotted throng of looping roots forming an impenetrable barrier on the banks. The first rays had not yet spread across the sky when we alighted in a shallow, muddy bay, but there was just sufficient light to see the path of wood planks leading to a sandy ridge. Beyond this I could make out the dark shapes and sounds of dense jungle.
My guides, ever smiling, motioned me to follow them, and I commenced the jungle trek. Under the foliage, there was just enough light so as not to require a torch, but not quite enough to completely dispel my disorientation, and there were numerous, comical smacks-in-the-face with banana leaves and palm fronds, and more than a few vines tripped over as I blundered along behind the guides. At one point when I came to an opening of tall grass, I bounded through with panicked haste, trying not to think about snakes – such was my haste that I failed to keep my feet on the track the guides had taken, and ended up knee-deep in a squelching puddle. The guides chuckled sympathetically, and helped me back on the invisible path.
I wandered along in this fashion for half an hour or so, the guides striding forward confidently, myself happily stumbling behind. The dried up riverbed-path soon ended at a large vertical slab of rock, surrounded on two sides by steep, muddy ridges. Fortunately, the ridges were shrouded with trees, from enormous buttressed giants to throngs of tiny saplings, and there was no shortage of things to hold on to. The guides barely paused at the ascent, and they would have continued confidently upwards at the same pace as they walked if I had not sheepishly and very loudly called out several times “UMM…”. This caused them to turn and find me with one ankle crooked into a tree root, and the other foot dangling above a fallen mound of leaf litter, hanging on to the branch above with both hands like a disoriented orang-utan. The kindly guides chuckled, and directed each of my hands and feet to where they could find the appropriate branch or rock. I was soon on the ascent again.
I arrived at the summit after only a few slides down wet, muddy patches, and having made no major falls into perilous ravines. In the clearing, there was a small structure which I soon realised was an ingeniously constructed blind. There were planks above the ground upon which to sit, and a thick matted blind of palm leaves with small spy holes threaded into it so that we could observe the bird without being observed.
For the last few meters of the ascent, the guides had periodically turned to me and motioned that the sound they were hearing was the Wilson's Bird call, very nearby. I nodded vigorously, trusting that, while I was hearing at least a dozen loud bird calls and had no idea which belonged to whom, they were confident that the Wilson's was in the vicinity. As we sat behind the blind the sound became closer, right over head, and as I scanned the patch below us, my excitement mounted.
The ‘court’ of the Wilson's Bird of Paradise, is a curious looking thing, and even a blunderer like myself would have been struck by it if it had come across my path in the middle of the forest. It was essentially a bare patch of rope-like vines. There was hardly a single leaf or shred of greenery growing on any of the vines, and very few on the saplings and branches overhanging the patch. As I sat there catching my breath one of the guides slowly and quietly moved into the patch and placed 3 large, waxy leaves in middle of the court, then returned to the blind.
We waited, still and silent. The noise of the mosquitoes became deafening, and I attempted, wide-eyed and all senses alert, to slap the mosquitoes in slow motion so as not to create a disturbance. Sweat poured from beneath my long clothing, and I noticed with mild concern the inhabitant of an enormous spider web in the middle of one of the spy holes. I made a mental note to avoid that area.
Suddenly there was a flutter, like the sound of a hummingbird but louder, and all of our bodies tensed and eyes widened. The guide, displaying an enormous, beetle-nut stained grin was pointing towards a low branch near the back of the court, and without thinking I thrust my head straight into the spider-web patch to get a better look. After freeing myself from the entanglement in a state of silent, slow-motion semi panic, I at last caught sight of the Wilson’s Bird of Paradise.
distractions to his own brilliance; he removes the leaves from the floor of the court, and also from any overhanging saplings, so as to allow as much light as possible onto his arena. In a forest of constantly falling leaves, this is a full time occupation, and he works at it with vigour.
He spends much of his remaining time waiting for female visitors. Upon her arrival, he waits for the female to perch herself above him, and will then puff out his exquisite green chest, making it an extended feathery shield in front of him, and raising the two circular feather tail-curls perpendicular to the twig, so that she might best admire them. These exertions seem to require a great deal of energy, and do not last long – but the male is persistent, and will continue to display until the female submits to his advances or, far more frequently, flies away leaving the suitor presumably crest-fallen.
The morning of my encounter was a housekeeping morning. The leaves placed by the guide on his threshold evidently vexed the bird, because he soon alighted near the centre of his patch, and began eyeing the trespassing leaves methodically. He set to, removing them – this took some effort, as the leaves were almost as long as his own body, around 20 cm or so, and although they cannot have been heavy they were clearly cumbersome. He hopped about and in short drags, shifted them closer to the outskirts of his terrain. After completing this task, he again darted off into the trees above our heads, and the whole party behind the blind simultaneously exhaled and broke into irrepressible wide-eyed grins.
He returned to his court, hopped about, attended to his housekeeping, and flitted away a total of 4 times in the two and half hours which we sat there, motionless behind the screen. Some encounters were a matter of seconds; others were longer – in total, we cannot have had more than 5 minutes of proper, close up viewing-time with the bird. I was later told that this was a very good encounter; sometimes enthusiastic seekers sit at the blind for hours and do not encounter the bird at all.
I cannot help but wonder what this particular bird, if he were capable of conscious thought, would think to learn of what was going on behind that blind. If he was aware that some humans travel halfway across the world, hike for hours, endure rain, insects, mud and sprained limbs to sit quietly at his doorstep, just for the privilege of a tiny glimpse at his housekeeping (this in itself is enough to make most pilgrims ecstatic; a glimpse of his mating rituals reduces many observers to swoons). The humans then descend the hike, floundering back through the jungle to their huts on the beach and fall exhausted but unspeakably happy onto the bed, crowded with visions of how beautiful he is. In the evening, the humans convene together in the dining room, and spend hours discussing in detail the mundane daily habits of his life, and the details of his appearance.
It is possible that it would all seem unbelievably ridiculous from the perspective of the conscious Wilson’s Paradise Bird. Going to such lengths for a glimpse seems ridiculous to some humans I know. But being there, and seeing this bird was rewarding in a way that really is indescribable – you cannot understand it unless you are there, covered in mud and bites, conscious that you are just a few feet away from something so rare and so absurdly beautiful – the act of taking a moment to do nothing but appreciate it's very existence is a remarkable experience. After my first birding encounter, I understood why people undertook this ritual, for glimpses of Paradise birds and for every other kind of bird.
I was an unlikely convert to bird-watching only because I had never thought to give it a chance – although I have forgotten his name and will probably never see him again, I remain deeply grateful to the man at the table next to ours, whose eccentric and jubilant ramblings opened the door.
The male Wilson’s Bird can be easily identified by his bright, sky-blue skull cap, brilliant red wings, and two circular curling tail feathers. He has a yellow patch above his wings, purple feet, and his breast feathers appear to change from black to brilliant green – this is because they do in fact “change” depending on how the light hits them. The colour seen on his breast (or his feet and skull cap) is not the pigment of the feathers – it is the effect of the interaction of light on a microscopic structure on these feathers, causing certain colours to be visible when hit by light in a certain way. The effect is marvellous, and an insight into understanding the pains that the bird takes to clear his court in order to ensure that he alone is the centre of attention. The male fastidiously clears his court of all