Birds
Greater Bird-of-paradise
Paradisaea apoda · also called greater bird-of-paradise, burong mati
The greater bird-of-paradise is the species that gave the whole family its name and its legend. Its dried trade skins, arriving in 16th-century Europe with the legs cut off, convinced naturalists that here was a bird that never touched the ground — a creature of pure air. The reality is stranger in its own way: a maroon crow-relative whose males grow fountains of golden plumes and dance for their lives in the treetops.
Overview
Greater birds-of-paradise live in lowland and hill rainforest in the Aru Islands and southwest New Guinea, with a small introduced population on Little Tobago in the Caribbean. They feed mainly on fruit, especially figs, plus insects, high in the canopy. Females and young males are plain maroon-brown; adult males have a yellow crown, iridescent green throat, and a spray of enormous lemon-yellow flank plumes.
The footless myth
Traders prepared skins by removing the legs and wings, so the first Europeans to see them assumed the birds had no feet and floated permanently aloft, feeding on dew. Linnaeus cemented the error in 1758 with the name Paradisaea apoda — “the footless bird of paradise.”
The lek
Males gather at a communal display tree — up to a dozen in one crown — and perform together while females visit to choose. A displaying male calls loudly, then freezes in a rigid forward lean with wings cupped, and raises his golden plumes into a shimmering cascade over his back. Females assess several males across visits and mate with the best. The male does nothing else — no nest, no care.
Runaway ornament
Because females raise the young alone and select mates purely on display, and a few males father most chicks, sexual selection runs away, driving male plumage to extremes. New Guinea’s 40-plus birds-of-paradise, with their wires, capes, and dances, are the classic example — possible because the island has few ground predators and abundant fruit.
Status
The greater bird-of-paradise is Least Concern and has recovered from the millinery plume trade of around 1900, when hundreds of thousands of skins were exported for hats before bans took effect. Local ceremonial hunting continues at a sustainable scale.
Greater Bird-of-paradise: common questions
Why is it called "apoda", meaning without feet?
When the first bird-of-paradise skins arrived in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s, traders in the Moluccas and New Guinea prepared them by removing the wings and legs and often the body, leaving a dried skin of head and spectacular plumes. Europeans who had never seen a live one concluded that the birds genuinely had no feet, never landed, floated permanently in the air feeding on dew, and even that the female incubated eggs in a hollow on the male's back. When Linnaeus formally named the greater bird-of-paradise in 1758 he enshrined the myth in the name Paradisaea apoda, "the footless bird of paradise."
How does the male attract a mate?
Greater birds-of-paradise use a lek. Several adult males gather in the crown of a particular tall tree, each maintaining a display perch, and perform together while females visit to assess them. A displaying male gives loud, ringing calls, then throws himself into a rigid pose — body horizontal, wings raised and cupped forward — and erects his enormous filmy yellow flank plumes so they cascade up and over his back in a golden spray, quivering. Females watch multiple males over multiple visits and mate with the one they find most impressive. The male provides nothing else — no territory, no nest-building, no parental care.
Why do the males have such extreme plumage?
It is the result of runaway sexual selection under a lek mating system. Because females do all the parenting and choose mates purely on display, and because a few top males father most of the chicks, any heritable feature that makes a male more attractive spreads fast, even if it makes him more visible to predators or harder to fly. Over generations this drives ornaments to spectacular extremes. New Guinea's birds-of-paradise are the textbook example, with 40-plus species evolving wildly different plumes, wires, capes, and dances, because the island has relatively few ground predators and a rich, reliable fruit supply that lets females raise young alone.
What happened with the plume trade?
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, bird-of-paradise skins became a high-fashion material for women's hats in Europe and North America, and hundreds of thousands were shipped out of New Guinea and the Aru Islands each year, with the greater bird-of-paradise among the most heavily hunted because of its large golden plumes. The trade helped spur the early conservation movement; it was progressively banned in the 1920s. Today the birds are hunted only at a small scale by local communities for ceremonial headdresses, which is generally sustainable, and the species has recovered.