Biography of paradise birds

Bas Zn Zk about p. The family of paradise birds of Paradise only in recent years we have received thorough information about the extremely beautiful birds of New Guinea and the islands adjacent to it, which have been brought to us often in the form of mutilated skins and gave a reason to peculiar legends. They have long been called paradise birds and now they are still called that because there was a belief that they come directly from paradise and lead a peculiar way of life.

They were brought to us without legs and, not paying attention to the fact that mutilating could be committed by natives, believed that the birds did not have their feet by nature. Their unprecedented plumage and luxurious colors gave a wide scope of all fantasy, and in the end people began to believe the most incredible fables. You involuntarily sympathize, reading, as some zealous, but limited in their means, natural scientists of the 16th century considered the greatest event of their life, the satisfaction of a long -hidden desire, when they could finally see the mutilated skin of a paradise bird.

Sorry, if at that time various fables were composed, which were given to faith for a long time. They looked at these birds as at cheerful bells, the birthplace of which was one endless air sea, which made all their flights of flying and resting only a few moments, hanging on a bitch on their long threaded tail feathers. Like the highest beings, they did not have the need to touch the Earth and ate ethereal food and morning dew.

The recognition by the absurdity of the absence of legs in this wonderful bird even did not serve anything with Pigafetta himself. Markgrev, Klusius and other researchers of that time in vain proved that it was nonsense: the people still held on their prejudiced gaze. "Passed the centuries before we became the life of paradise birds. Various travelers reported more or less important data regarding the life of these birds, but hardly at least one of them was quite free from prevailing prejudice.

Swimming spent 13 days in New Guinea, reported on paradise birds on the basis of his personal observations. After him, only recently Bennett, Vallas and Rosenberg gave reliable information about the life of these fairy -tale birds at large and captivity. Paradise birds are related to our ravens, the size is from the growth of the soy to the growth of the lark, but in beauty they are really magnificent.

Their beak of various sizes, straight or bent and does not have bristles at the base, as we see at the raven, so the nostrils remain completely open. The legs are strong, with thumb, armed with strong, sharp, very bent claws. Wings are medium -sized and very rounded. The tail is straight and consists of 12 feathers of moderate length, and characterized by elongated feathers resembling a wire, or very long, simple and then very stepped.

In many species, flyer feathers are unusually elongated and mulberries. Females and chicks are always more painted than males. For several centuries, as the Papuans have traded not only skins of paradise, but also other birds, and especially the Dutch engaged in this exchange. The method and essence of the usual preparation of such skins by the natives is described by Rosenberg as follows: “Papuans kill males, and sometimes females with arrows, make transverse cuts on their back and belly and tear off the skin from these birds especially Tolsta.

Then they cut off the legs along with the back of the abdominal skin, pull out large fly feathers and pull the skin on a round stick so that it protruds a few centimeters from the beak; The latter is tied to a piece of wood with a lace. After that, they sprinkle the skins with wood ash and hang them inside the hut above the hearth to dry them and protect them from insects. The skin is ready then.

The natives of Mizul and the legs and fly feathers leave with the skin; Arouzes also noticed that unexplored skins are preferred and more expensive than the disfigured, and gradually behind their old method, so now good skins are on sale from the islands. Paradise birds are bought mainly by merchants from Magcassar, Ternata and East Ceram, who bring them to their homeland or Singapore, from where the skins are taken to Europe and China.

According to these merchants, the most beautiful skins come from the northern shores of New Guinea and from countries that lie down in the depths of Gilvink's bay. The Tidorsky Sultan, the laid owner of a part of the New Guinea, consisting of the Dutch protector, annually receives an indefinite number of skins from there in the form of a tribute, the value of which extends from 25 cents to the 1st Dutch Gulden.

"Red Paradise Paradisaea Rubra is even less. Its length is only 33 cm, its length is the wing 17, tail 14, tail 14, tail 14 See it differs from both of the above birds with a golden green, raised cirrus crest on the back of the head.Her back is pale gray-yellow; This coloring spreads along the lower part in the form of a strip on the chest. The throat of the oxide green.

The chest and wings are red-brown. Red Paradise bird Paradisaea Rubra feathers near the base of the beak and a small speck behind the eyes are velvety-black. Side cosmas of feathers of a wonderful red color, at the end are equipped with curls. Long tail feathers, bending outward, have wide trunks.

The eyes are light yellow. The beak and legs are ash-gray-blue. In females, the front of the head and goiter is velvety-brown, the upper side of the body and the abdomen are red-brown. The neck and chest are light red. Until now, this species was found only on the islands of Vaigiu and Batante, and the preparation of the skins of these birds, apparently, are engaged in only residents of the Bessi settlement on the southern shore of the island.

These are lively, cheerful, smart, but flirty birds, which are fully aware of their beauty and danger that they are exposed to it. All travelers who observed these birds in their homeland talk about them with admiration. When Lesson first watched the bird flying over him, he was so amazed at its beauty that he only watched her eyes and could not decide to shoot at her. The description of the life of these birds made by him is confirmed and supplemented by Rosenberg: “Paradise birds belong to stray birds; they either fly to the shores, then fly back into the depths of the country, thinking with the roller of wood fruits.

By the time of my stay in Dore, the fruits of one laurel, which grew near the settlements of the island. The waves of the wings of the bird, most of the female and young males, flew to the tree and were so brave that they returned back even after several shots in them. At another time, the birds of paradise, especially old males, are very shy and hardly allowed to a shot.

Their voice is hoarse, but heard at a distant distance. In the morning or in the evening, rarely during the day, these screams are distributed throughout the forest. "You so often hear it in the forests that you come to the assumption about the multiplicity of these birds. Despite this, it is very difficult to catch it thanks to its liveliness and continuous mobility.

I often saw old males sitting on low trees or bushes at a height of several meters. They jumped in branches in almost horizontal barrels, As if hunting for insects, which, as I suppose, make up their only food, until their favorite fruits have ripened - Indian figs. In continuous movement, a bird of paradise flies from a tree to a tree, it never sits on one branch for a long time and, at the slightest noise, is hidden in the thick foliage of the tops of trees.

Before sunrise, they are cheerful and troublesome, consisting of fruits and insects. By evening, they are going to spend the night with companies at the top of some tall tree. The mating time depends on the wind of Monsun. On the eastern and northern shores of New Guinea, it falls on May, on the western bank and on Mizul - in November. At about this time, males gather in small flocks of 10 to 12 pieces, which natives call dance societies, usually fly to tall forest trees with outstretched branches and rare foliage, lively fly off the branch, stretch their necks, lift and clapped their wings, turn their tail in the other direction, dissolve and fold the side cosmas Feathers and make a strange croaking sound to which females arrive.

The nest and eggs of paradise birds are still unknown. One type of paradise bird is nesting in hollows. For some species of paradise birds, the nest is still not known. In the masonry of brownish eggs with dark spots. In their branches, they arrange a small hut from the leaves and branches. About an hour after the sunset, an experienced shooter, stored on onions and arrows, climbs a tree, hides in a hut and waits, observing the strictest silence, the arrival of birds.

When they fly, he deftly kills one after another, and one of his comrades hiding under a tree, picks up the dead birds. If the hunter shoots with pointed arrows, the birds fall dead and, conversely, fall alive in the hands of the shooter if he uses arrows equipped with many triangular ends, in which the body of the bird is infringed on the strength of the shot, "the natives also catch these birds with glue of the bread tree, and according to Vallas, the Red Paradise is caught only by loop which stretch in the branches of the bread so that the bird should get into them with a foot when it is going to tear off the other end of the loop, so that it is possible to get a bird from the tree without much work.

At first they brought her to her lively, but in a bird, tied to some bag, all her wonderful feathers turned out to be shifted and broken in the most terrible way. I enlightened people that they could tie the bird caught by the legs to the stick and so bring it to me; The result of this was that I received birds completely soiled. They simply threw tied birds on the floor of the huts, and the poor birds were terribly dirty in Peple, Smol and the like.

In vain, I asked the natives to bring me birds immediately after the capture, in vain convinced me to immediately kill the birds, hang them to a stick and bring them to me: they did not do either one or the other out of laziness. I had 4 or 5 people in my service, whom I paid ahead for a certain number of birds obtained. They were divided and scattered through the forest into a whole mile in a circle to find a good place for fishing.

If they caught one bird, it was very unprofitable for them to immediately bring it to me; They preferred to drag her, trying to keep her alive as long as possible, and often, after a week or daytime, they came to me with one killed, usually vagged in heavenly bird, with another killed, still fresh, and the third alive, which was caught the last. All my efforts to change this method of hunting were completely in vain.

Fortunately, the plumage of paradise birds is so firm that the spoiled copies were still suitable. "Later, Vallas was more fortunate. He was the first to bring two living parades to Europe. On Amboan, Magcassar, Batavia, Singapore and Manila Malaya Paradisa Minor, they were kept in cells. years ago, the bird of paradise flew out of the cage; The Slot Van Der Beel paid for two adult males of the Dutch Guldenians.

Rosenberg personally brought from Magcassar to Java. Even in Berlin, some birds of paradise lived for several years and were healthy. Lesson and other researchers consider it positively impossible to convey in words the whole brilliance of the plumage of another representative of this kind - black -hearted Astrapia Astrapia Nigra. Its plumage, which, depending on the falling light, casts the brightest and most amazing colors, in the upper part of the purple-black with a wonderful metallic luster.

Black surgery Astrapia Nigra, parietal feathers of hyacinth-red with famara-golden tips. The lower body of the body of a malachite-green color.