Little bird of paradise
| Little bird of paradise | ||||||||||||
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Little bird of paradise ( Paradisaea minor ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Paradisaea minor | ||||||||||||
| Shaw , 1809 |
The small bird of paradise ( Paradisaea minor ), also called yellow bird of paradise , is a species of bird from the genus of the actual birds of paradise within the family of birds of paradise (Paradisaeidae). It occurs exclusively in New Guinea, where it is a common and widespread species in the west and north. There is pronounced gender dimorphism, but both sexes are distinctive. The Little Bird of Paradise has been known to the western world since the first half of the 17th century, as Ferdinand Magellan's crew brought bird hides of this type back to Europe from their first circumnavigation of the world .
The species is classified as harmless ( least concern ) by the IUCN . Several subspecies are distinguished.
description
Body type and measurements
The little bird of paradise reaches a body length of 32 centimeters. In the male, the wing measures between 18 and 19.6 centimeters, in the female, however, between 15.2 and 17.4 centimeters. Like many birds of paradise, the males have a middle pair of rudder feathers that protrude far beyond the rest of the tail plumage. It measures between 42 and 64 centimeters, while the remaining tail plumage is between 11.6 and 13.3 centimeters long. In the female, however, the middle pair of control feathers is shorter than the rest of the tail plumage: It measures between 9.3 and 11.8 centimeters, while the other control feathers are between 10.3 and 12.6 centimeters long. The beak measures between 3.4 and 4.3 centimeters in both sexes. The males weigh between 185 and 285 grams, the females remain slightly lighter at 145 to 186 grams.
male
The reins, forehead, ear covers, beard, chin and throat are velvety black and have an intense emerald green shimmer when the light falls. The rest of the head is pale orange-yellow and can form silver highlights under certain lighting conditions, which can also be found on the neck plumage and the coat. The neck and the coat are otherwise red-brown, the back and the wings, however, are sepia-colored. The rump and the upper tail-coverts have a slightly more intense red-brownish tone. The greatly elongated middle pair of control feathers has outer flags only in the basal part, which are the same color as the rest of the tail plumage. They then turn into brown wire-like spring shafts.
The breast is reddish earth brown, on the belly, the thighs and the under tail-coverts the plumage changes into a walnut brown tone. The tail covers are greatly elongated. The feathers on the flanks are also greatly elongated, with the front feathers partly completely bright yellow or yellow on the basal half and then turning into white, and the rear and the elongated tail coverts are creamy white to bright white.
The bill is chalky blue-gray, the iris is dark yellow. The legs and feet are gray-brown. The inside of the beak is matt flesh-colored.
Color morphs in the male
According to local tradition, very old males have significantly darker plumage on the face, neck and neck than the young males. At least one partly albinotic male has also been observed. This was shiny white and had yellowish feathers only on the crown, the mantle and the wing-coverts. Another male had wings and tail plumage pale brown.
female
The female has noticeably shorter wings than the male. The entire head is warm sepia-colored and is an orange-yellow transition at the back of the head. The neck is pure orange-yellow, while the coat is walnut-brown. The small wing-coverts and the outer edges of the large wing-coverts are matt yellowish-reddish brown. The middle pair of control springs is shorter, narrower and tapered to a point than the other control springs. The entire underside of the body is whitish with a pale wine-red shimmer on the flanks, the under tail-coverts. The fore chest is wine red, the throat darker.
Distribution area, subspecies and habitat
The range extends from the island of Misool , one of the four main islands of the archipelago of Raja Ampat off the coast of western New Guinea , over the Vogelkop over the northern half of central New Guinea to the north coast of the Huon Peninsula as the easternmost range. There the distribution area also overlaps with that of the Raggi bird of paradise . The altitude distribution ranges from the lowlands to altitudes of around 1550 meters.
The following subspecies are distinguished:
- P. m. minor - Shaw, 1809 - Misool Island and the western half of New Guinea to about the border between Western New Guinea and Papua New Guinea .
- P. m. jobiensis - Rothschild, 1897 - Yapen Island in Cenderawasih Bay .
- P. m. finschi - AB Meyer, 1885 - Northern Papua New Guinea from the border with Western New Guinea to the Huon Peninsula.
The little bird of paradise is a common and widespread bird in the lowlands and mountain forests of the foothills. It does not only occur in primary forest, but also colonizes forest edges and secondary forest. Similar to the Raggi bird of paradise, it has adapted to habitats that are heavily reshaped by humans. It usually hangs in the upper treetop area, but occasionally comes close to the ground and can even be seen on cultivated areas if these have trees.
Way of life
Basically, the males are shy and tend to stay in the forest interior and in mature secondary growth. The females, on the other hand, which have less conspicuous plumage than the males, are found in a wider range of habitats. Compared to the Raggi bird of paradise belonging to the same genus, however, the small bird of paradise is more dependent on forest areas overall.
The diet of the little bird of paradise is dominated by fruits. While foraging for food, they occasionally hang upside down from the branches in order to get to certain favorite fruits. Other bird species, such as the pink-breasted cuckoo pigeon, are driven away from fruit-bearing trees by the Little Bird of Paradise.
In addition to fruits, they also eat invertebrates, which they look for on small branches, the underside of larger branches, between the tree bark, in the tangle of creepers and epiphytes at a height of between 8 and 20 meters. They join during the search for food and occasionally other types of such as king bird-of-paradise , twelve-wired bird-of-paradise , Jobiparadieskrähe and rufous-Paradieshopf .
Reproduction
Like the vast majority of birds of paradise, the small bird of paradise is also polygynous , which means that the male mates with several females if possible. The respective female raises the offspring alone.
Courtship
The courtship takes place on Leks , a courtship area in which several males courtship together around a female. According to investigations in individual regions, there are usually 3 males courting together. However, 10 to 20 adult males also come together at individual leks. In addition, several subadult males can be found at the courtship areas.
Unlike many other birds of paradise, courtship does not take place on the ground, but on certain branches of one or more adjacent trees. These almost horizontal branches and their immediate surroundings are freed from their leaves by the males. On a lek observed over several days in the Baiyer River Sanctuary , males courted daily on eight branches of the lek. Four of the branches were clearly only used by one clearly identifiable male. With the other four branches it is also possible that only one male used the branch for courtship. However, these males could not be clearly identified by their plumage. The males courted between 6:00 and 9:00 in the morning and between 2:30 and 5:15 pm in the afternoon. Of the 26 pairings that occurred during the observation period, 25 were attributable to a single male.
The leks usually last for several years. Members of indigenous ethnic groups recorded that they had hunted the males in their magnificent plumage for at least three generations at individual courtship sites. This means that some of the mating grounds have existed for at least 60 to 100 years.
Nest and clutch
Only a few nests have been found in the wild so far. The nests were high up in a fork of branches. The nest is cup-shaped. One nest examined had a diameter of 12 to 13 centimeters and was 8 centimeters high. It was built from small, wire-like roots and partially covered with dead leaves on the outside. Captive females typically started nesting 7 days before laying eggs and took two to five days to complete the nest.
The clutch usually consists of one egg, rarely a clutch comprises two eggs. The eggs have a pale pink base color with the elongated brown and red-brown spots typical of the subfamily of the actual birds of paradise. Captive females laid a single egg just three days after mating with the male.
Breeding time and rearing of young birds
Breeding females held in captivity spend an average of only 54 minutes outside the nest. This unusually long time spent at the nest is, however, almost certainly linked to the optimal food and water supply in captivity. In the wild, the females are likely to spend significantly more time searching for food and water. The nestlings all hatched after 18 days. A nestling weighed immediately after hatching weighed 10.4 grams.
When a nestling hatched in captivity was hand-raised, feathers appeared on the back and shoulders on day 11 of life. From the 15th day of life he began to look after his plumage and gained between 3 and 4 grams a day at that time. From the 19th day of life he was able to stand on a branch and from the 20th day he began to peck for food. From the age of 40 he was able to search for food independently. A similar development was observed in two nestlings raised in captivity by the female parent bird. They left the nest on their 18th day of life. One was still being fed by the female on the 42nd day of life, while the other young bird began to look for food independently from the 28th day of life.
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. It is mostly the males who stand out with their very different plumage. Occasionally they are initially described as a distinct species. The type specimen , which was originally described as Janthothorax bensbachi , is now considered a cross between the magnificent bird of paradise and the small bird of paradise. Only one of the bellows found in museums is known. On the other hand, five bellows are known, which are very likely to have emerged from crossings between the thread hop and the little bird of paradise. They were originally described as Paradiese mirabilis or Janthothorax mirabilis . Another type is considered to be a cross between the little bird of paradise and the sickle-tailed bird of paradise .
Along the upper course of the Ramu is a 35-kilometer-wide corridor in which the distribution area of the Raggi Bird of Paradise and the Little Bird of Paradise overlap. A number of hybrids between the two species have been observed in this area. The range of the two species may also overlap on the west coast of the Huon Peninsula, so that they can also find hybrids there.
Little birds of paradise and humans
hunt
The feathers of the Little Bird of Paradise are made into traditional head and body jewelry by indigenous peoples of New Guinea. Only the males are hunted. Despite the hunting that has been going on for generations, the population is stable and very dense in some regions - the little bird of paradise on the island of Yapen is one of the most common birds in the lowlands, in the foothills and in mountain forests.
attitude
Alfred Wallace sent a pair of Little Birds of Paradise to Great Britain as early as the 1860s, the pair were kept at London Zoo from April 1860. Small birds of paradise have already been successfully bred in zoos. In an offspring, the mating took place between a female and a male who still wore his youthful dress, which was similar to the female plumage. A number of other observations on the breeding time and rearing of the nestlings were also collected that have not yet been observed in birds found in the wild.
literature
- Michael Apel, Katrin Glas and Gilla Simon (eds.): Natural and cultural history of the birds of paradise. Munich 2011, ISBN | 978-3-00-0352219-5.
- 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
- Videos, photos and sound recordings of Paradisaea minor in the Internet Bird Collection
- Avibase record of Little Bird of Paradise ( Paradisaea minor ) Shaw, 1809
- Paradisaea minor inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
Single receipts
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 439.
- ↑ a b Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 441.
- ↑ Handbook of the Birds of the World on the Little Bird of Paradise , accessed on August 6, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d e f Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 442.
- ↑ a b Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 440.
- ^ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae , p. 443.
- ↑ a b c d Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae . P. 444.
- ↑ a b Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae , p. 446.
- ↑ a b c Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae , p. 447.
- ^ McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World . P. 228.
- ^ A b McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World . P. 231.
- ^ McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World , p. 229.
- ^ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae , p. 448.