That elusive bird… so elusive to get a copyright free pic of it. Should I just rely on National Geographic and pay (God knows) what they would charge?
Middle to Late 2014. My dad wanted to visit the zoo. The Louisville Zoo had some new insect promotion, in which it had large statues and such of different kinds of insects–great photo opportunity, that sort of thing.
I had in late 2013 acquired a brand new camera. Since this would be an opportunity to use my Canon Rebel T3 semi-professional camera at the zoo for the first time, I decided I might as well bring that along.
The ducks were nice. The elephants were elegant–well, as much as they can be. The bats were vampirish. The polar bear was boss, walking around in a circle like some fashion model strutting her designer clothing.
But in all this, I was taking pictures of birds. Yes, birds. Having done some research on Papua New Guinean birds that summer, I had noticed that the zoo had some tropical birds of the South Pacific variety.
One of the birds they had was “a dime a dozen,” as the saying goes. The Papua New Guinean “crowned pigeon.” (No, it doesn’t look like a western pigeon. It just acts like one.)
But the Victoria Crowned Pigeon was not the prize, though I got a decent picture of that. But I had already had a good picture of that from someone who had visited Papua New Guinea back in 2010.
The prize was a bird of paradise. A crowing, snapping small bird, distinguishable from a blackbird or crow by its feather colors and disco dancing moves. The Louisville Zoo had claimed to have a magnificent bird of paradise on display there.
After visiting the zoo and reviewing the photos, I found one picture that might have had it on there.
Fortunately for me, one of those Papua New Guinean missionaries just so happened to be at my home church in the following few days after my family visit to the zoo. So, while the picture was still on my SD card in my camera, I used the viewfinder to show him the picture.
From what he could see, he confirmed to me that he believed it was a bird of paradise. I value his opinion because I knew he had seen a bird of paradise before. (Some missionaries to PNG or missionary kids even, have not seen a bird of paradise live in the wild. In other words, they haven’t seen anything that you cannot find from watching National Geographic–maybe even less than that.)
Still though, I thought it might be wise to try to compare the bird in the photograph I took with actual birds of paradise that had been documented and photographed.
The result was… peculiar to say the least.
At first glance, the bird in the picture looked like a 12-wired bird of paradise. The yellow feathers underneath. The dark feathers over top. But then I looked at the eye color. White. Wait a second, wasn’t the eye color for a male 12-wired bird of paradise supposed to be pinkish? What’s going on here?
And what about the feet? Weren’t they supposed to be pink as well? Why were they seemingly out of pigment–white or grayish? Was it the lighting in the zoo? Was this some sort of partial albino bird of paradise? Could it be that this bird of paradise is only half bird of paradise and half something else? Could it be a mix of two birds of paradise?
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology had videos as well as National Geographic on many of these birds of paradise, which come in an undetermined variety. (Some counts differ from others. Cornell gives 39.) However, they were not conclusive either in helping me determine what sort of bird this was in my photo.
All this sent me into an online search for pigmentation in bird eyes, which led me to inconclusive results. What bird of paradise had white in its eyes, like a human being? Australian crows, if I’m to believe the reports of some, have such eyes. After further research, I found that there is a white-eyed “family” (I use that term loosely here) of birds that are native to the Indian ocean and South Pacific. Is this bird I photographed an offspring of a bird of paradise and an Australian Crow? A bird of paradise and one of the tropical white-eyed birds? But isn’t the whiteness of those tropical birds from their feathers?
I tried to do online searches for birds with the precise characteristics that I had seen for the bird in my photo. Alas, however, I found no matches! Sure, it would help maybe if I knew other characteristics of this zoo-kept bird. Maybe I should try the Louisville Zoo’s own online records? Well, they didn’t have the kind of detail about the bird that I had wanted to find. Could I have mistaken this bird I photographed with a different bird that the zoo had? No other birds on record seemed to match the one I had photographed either!
And what about this label “Magnificent Bird of Paradise”? That’s supposed to be a designation for an actual type of bird of paradise. Too many searches online came up with the “Superb” Bird of Paradise, which is a different bird of paradise with a color that my photographed bird did not have.
Time to return to the Cornell videos and see if I missed something. No, the Magnificent Bird of Paradise appears to have yellow feathers on the top part of the wing, not below the wings. But on the positive side, the feet of the bird aren’t pink but rather, some color very close to what my photographed bird has.
Could the photographed bird be a mix of the 12-wired and Magnificent Bird of Paradise? Could the differences in color of feathers be accounted for some other way, namely, as one stage in a “molting” process before the bird reaches its final color form? The American Goldfinch and many other birds have some variety in feather color from one type of molt to the other, as Cornell has noted. Large parrots reportedly molt about once per year. Why not other tropical birds like a bird of paradise? The bird was too vibrant in color to have been a female, at least in some bird of paradise varieties.
There are some birds that I can safely rule out as possibilities for this bird’s origin, assuming that the Louisville Zoo wasn’t fooled by someone offering a fake bird to the institution. Under that assumption…I can rule out virtually all North American birds; I think I can rule out crows as sole ancestors for the bird. The bird seems at least partly legit. Should I just trust the missionary’s word?
Well, hopefully the picture will end up in the book, unless a better usable one turns up, or unless the bird I photographed turns out to be a fake. Out of all the pictures from missionary kids that I have, and of all the pictures of those who went on missions trips to PNG, I found no birds of paradise.
Blue feathers on the top of the wings. Dark green feathers at the top of the head. Yellow feathers on the bird’s underside (but not on the underside of the wings). White or gray feet. Whites in the eyes. Definitely tropical if real.
This ranks as one of the most intriguing research projects I’ve ever done. If no solution can be found, what am I going to tell a future publisher?
Partial Gloss Bibliography:
BirdChannel. “Molting.” I-5 Publishing. 2014. http://www.birdchannel.com/bird-health/molting.aspx. Accessed 28 Dec. 2014. Web.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Various Videos (see YouTube).
Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Plumage Versions.” All About Birds. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/feathers/plumagev/document_view. Accessed 28 Dec. 2014. Web.
National Geographic. Various Videos (see YouTube).
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