Carola bird of paradise
| Carola bird of paradise | ||||||||||||
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Carola bird of paradise. The female pictured at the back has falsely elongated head feathers. These only occur in males. |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Parotia carolae | ||||||||||||
| AB Meyer , 1894 |
The Carola bird of paradise ( Parotia carolae ), also known as the Carola ray of paradise , is a species of bird from the family of birds of paradise (Paradisaeidae). It occurs exclusively in the interior of New Guinea . As is characteristic of a bird of paradise, the male has three elongated decorative feathers on each side of the head. Otherwise it differs significantly from the other radiation paradise birds. The German trivial name and the additional species chosen by the German first describer of the bird, Adolf Bernhard Meyer , honor Carola von Wasa-Holstein-Gottorp , the last queen of Saxony.
The population of the Carola bird of paradise is classified as safe ( least concern ) by the IUCN . There are five subspecies.
description
Body type and measurements
The males of the Carola bird of paradise reach a body length of 26 centimeters, of which the tail plumage accounts for between 7.3 and 8.2 centimeters. The females remain slightly smaller with a body length of 25 centimeters. With them the tail plumage reaches a length between 8.7 and 9.6 centimeters.
The beak measures between 3.1 and 3.8 centimeters in the males and between 3.4 and 3.9 centimeters in the females. Up to now, weight data could only be collected from a few individuals. The only male weighed 205 grams, the females between 110 and 163 grams.
male
The males have a velvet black head. The black feathers on the reins are elongated and straight up. Between the reins there is a small, erect tuff of blackish-brown feathers with a silvery tip. Such silver Federtuffs at the front face can also be found in blue neck bird of paradise and the Arfak parotia , both types of parotia . In the Carola's bird of paradise, the feather tuff extends from the nostrils to the region between the eyes.
The eyes are surrounded by a ring of bronze-colored feathers. Behind it runs a band of iridescent feathers that can change from blue-green to purple or magenta. Behind each eye, at the level of the ear covers, there are feather ears made of elongated, pointed feathers. Three of the feathers are strongly elongated like a wire and end in small, almost round black ovals. This feature can be found in all radiation paradise birds and has given the genus its German name.
The rest of the body, including the top of the tail plumage, is black and shimmers bronze in certain light conditions. The chin is matte olive brown and pale tips. These feathers are somewhat elongated on the chin sides. The scale-like breast plumage is iridescent between bronze, green-yellow and magenta to pink. The middle of the underside of the body is dark sepia-colored with copper-colored highlights. The feathers on the flanks are matt white, elongated and slightly curved inwards. The bill is black, the iris is sulfur yellow, the legs and feet are blackish gray.
female
The female has a matt olive brown head with darker ear covers, a darker back of the head and an equally darker spring ring around the eyes. The nape of the neck is browner and may have individual chestnut-colored spots. The broad over-eye stripe and the beard stripe are white to whitish, the beard stripe also has fine, small olive-brown spots. The top of the body is olive brown. The chin is matte olive brown with gray-brown spots and transverse bands. The throat is pale gray-white with gray-brown spots, which gradually changes into a black-brown transverse banding that goes to the under tail-coverts. The tail plumage is olive brown, the middle pair of control feathers has paler feather shafts. The iris is pale gray, cream colored, or yellowish. Presumably, the eye color changes with age, but this has not yet been conclusively investigated.
Distribution area, subspecies and habitat
The range of the Carola bird of paradise is the interior of New Guinea - it is absent on the Vogelkop and the area that belongs to Papua Barat . It occurs from the Weyland Mountains in an easterly direction to Mount Giluwe , the Bismarck Mountains and the Hagen Mountains . The height distribution ranges from 1100 to 2000 meters. It is most often found in altitudes between 1450 and 1800 meters. In the east of the distribution area (Bismarck Mountains , Hagen Mountains , Owen Stanley Mountains ) their distribution area overlaps with that of the Blue-necked Bird of Paradise .
The following subspecies are distinguished:
- P. c. carolae AB Meyer , 1894 - Weyland Mountains to the Paniai Lakes in western New Guinea
- P. c. meeki Rothschild , 1910 - Snow Mountains, from the east of the Paniai Lakes to the south of the Doorman Mountains. The eastern limit of distribution is west of the Mamberano .
- P. c. chalcothorax Stresemann , 1934 - Doorman Mountains, south of the Idenburg River in western New Guinea.
- P. c. chrysenia Stresemann , 1934 - Northern slopes of the central mountain ranges and northern slopes of the Bismarck Mountains in eastern New Guinea.
- P. c. clelandiorum Gilliard , 1961 - Southern mountain slopes in eastern New Guinea. from C New Guinea SE probably to S watershed of Eastern Highlands (E at least to Crater Mt).
The habitat of the Carola birds of paradise are mountain forests ( primary and secondary forest ). The species is occasionally seen in overgrown gardens. Males are more likely to be found in the interior of the forest, while the females use a wider range of habitats.
Way of life
Both the males and the females can be observed regularly in small groups. They mainly eat fruit and regularly search epiphytic mosses for invertebrates. A bird was seen catching a grasshopper in the moss, holding it with one foot and tearing it apart. When foraging for food, they can occasionally be seen in the company of Sonic Manucodia , Collared Bird of Paradise and Little Bird of Paradise . While foraging they prefer to stay in the upper and middle canopy area. Similar to the delusional bird of paradise, it has been observed that the Carola birds of paradise kept in captivity also eat green leaves.
Reproduction
Like the vast majority of birds of paradise, the Carola's bird of paradise is polygynous , which means that the male mates with several females if possible. The respective female raises the offspring alone.
Courtship area
The courtship behavior has so far been little investigated - observations are only available for individual birds or individual courtship sites, so that a general behavior cannot yet be derived. Basically, the courtship grounds are on the ground and they are small; H. they have a basic size of about 1.5 × 1 meter. Similar to the mad bird of paradise , the males remove organic material such as the layer of leaves on the ground from the courtship area. The courtship area is occupied by one male at a time, but gatherings of males and females have been observed at a courtship area. Possibly this is a consequence of the fact that a single male tries to drive a female close to his courtship area by means of a driven hunt. These noisy chases attract the attention of other males and females, who then occasionally appear at the courtship area.
Courtship
The courtship had not been fully observed in the free run until 2000. Some of the findings come from captive Carola birds of paradise. Several courtship elements correspond to those of the blue- naped bird of paradise .
In a pair of this species kept in Great Britain, courtship was initiated by the male sitting on a branch turning his back to the female and, in a slightly crouched position, raising his white and elongated feathers on the sides of the body so that they reached over the wings of the hand . The male then began to hop up and down very quickly in one place, turning his sitting direction 180 degrees each time. He stood to the side of the female so that she could see the other side of the body. The male then switched to a branch below the female, turned his back to her again, while the head was turned to one side so that it was facing the female. This was followed by a rhythmic swinging of the body back and forth, while at the same time it flapped its wings slightly and the feathers of the tuff above the nostrils ruffled and rested tightly. The silvery tips of the tuff were particularly evident. The rhythmic sideways movements were then replaced by movements in which the male crouched repeatedly by bending his legs and then straightening his legs. In the stretching position, the wings were spread apart until they formed a horizontal surface with the back.
The courtship on the branch is followed by a courtship on the ground, in which the steps, body and wing movements become increasingly complex. One of the poses that the male assumes is the so-called ballerina pose, in which the male sits up high and rests the extended chest and flank feathers so far that they close over the back and almost completely envelop the body. This pose is known as the ballerina pose because the ruffled feathers wrap the body in a manner reminiscent of a ballerina's tutu . In other movements the male presents the six elongated ornamental feathers of the head by lowering the head and letting the widened feather ends fall in front of the head. With other courtship elements, the male flew back onto a branch and danced there with short, sideways triple steps. In the case of a male observed in the wild, courtship was repeatedly interrupted by his attempt to mate with the female present.
Nest, clutch, rearing young birds
So far no nests of wild birds of paradise have been found. A female kept in the Bayer River Sanctuary laid an egg on two consecutive days. These were cream in color with elongated broad strokes of gray and brownish color. So far nothing is known about the breeding period or the rearing of the young birds.
Hybrids with other birds of paradise
The tendency of birds of paradise to cross with other species in their family was already described by Anton Reichenow at the beginning of the 20th century and thus almost earlier than for any other bird family. Most of the hybrids that are discovered are males - deviating plumage features are more noticeable in them than in the more inconspicuously colored females. Deviating from this, a female has been scientifically described that arose from a crossing of the Carola bird of paradise with the collar bird of paradise . It was initially classified as a female of the Carola bird of paradise in the 1920s and later classified as a subspecies of the frilled bird of paradise. Since the 1990s it has been certain that it is a hybrid between the Carol and the collar bird of paradise.
attitude
An adult male was delivered to the Honolulu Zoo in 1954 and lived there until November 1968. He should therefore be at least 15 years old. Carola's Birds of Paradise have also been featured at Chester Zoo , UK.
literature
- Bruce M. Beehler , Thane K. Pratt: Birds of New Guinea; Distribution, Taxonomy, and Systematics. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2016, ISBN 978-0-691-16424-3 .
- Clifford B. Frith, Bruce M. Beehler : The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, ISBN 0-19-854853-2 .
- Eugene M McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 0-19-518323-1 .
Web links
Single receipts
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 298.
- ↑ a b Handbook of the Birds of the World on the Carola Bird of Paradise , accessed on July 24, 2017
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 300.
- ↑ a b c Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 301.
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 299.
- ↑ a b Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 303.
- ↑ a b c d e Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 304.
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 302.
- ^ McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World . P. 228.
- ^ A b McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World . P. 230.