Narrow-tailed paradise magpie
| Narrow-tailed paradise magpie | ||||||||||||
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Narrow-tailed magpie, male |
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| Astrapia mayeri | ||||||||||||
| Stonor , 1939 |
The narrow- tailed paradise magpie ( Astrapia mayeri ), also called narrow-tailed astrapia or silk ribbon bird of paradise , is a species of bird from the family of birds of paradise (Paradisaeidae). It occurs exclusively in a very small mountain area in eastern New Guinea. It is one of the birds of paradise in which the male has a greatly elongated middle pair of control feathers. This can reach a length of one meter.
The IUCN classifies the stock situation of the narrow-tailed paradise magpie as potentially endangered ( near threatened ). No subspecies are distinguished.
description
Body type and measurements
The males of the narrow-tailed paradise magpie reach a body length of 32 centimeters without the elongated middle control spring pair . Including these long tail feathers, they have a body length of up to 125 centimeters. The middle pair of control springs has a length between 65.7 and 101.7 centimeters. The females also have very long tail plumage, in which the middle pair of control feathers is also elongated. Without the tail plumage, they reach a body length of 35 centimeters. The middle pair of control springs reaches 26 to 37.2 centimeters. The beak has a length of 2.9 to 3.5 centimeters. The males weigh between 134 and 164 grams, the females weigh between 102 and 157 grams.
male
The entire head, including the button-like plume at the base of the upper beak, is velvety black with a very intense metallic yellowish-green sheen. Depending on the incidence of light, this shine can also be an intense blue or purple. The upper side of the body is velvet black from the coat to the upper tail ceilings with a slightly more matt bronze-colored shimmer. The wings are brownish black on top. In the arm and hand wings, this gloss is limited to the outer flags. The tail plumage is black-brown and - apart from the middle pair of control feathers - tapering off. The extended pair of control springs, on the other hand, is white, each about two centimeters wide and has a three to four centimeter wide black tip.
The throat shines as intensely as the head plumage. It then changes abruptly into the velvety black breast plumage, which in certain light conditions can also shine bronze. The dark chest is bordered by a narrow, strongly copper-colored, shiny reddish-brown band. The rest of the underside of the body up to the rump are copper-red and dark green transversely banded, the plumage shines intensely. The tail plumage is black-brown on the underside, only the middle pair of control feathers is glossy black. The tail plumage is ocher-colored except for the middle pair of white control feathers on the underside. The beak is glossy black, the iris is deep dark brown, the legs and feet are gray-blue.
In their first year of life, the males resemble the adult females, but already have longer tail plumage.
female
The entire head and neck are dark black-brown with a metallic bronze-colored shimmer, which can also appear bluish with certain incidence of light. In older females, the gloss is more pronounced. The rest of the upper side of the body is matt black-brown, but can also shimmer purple to magenta. The rump and the upper tail-coverts are brown and almost go into a sepia. The tail plumage is brownish black. The middle pair of control feathers has white feather shafts on the basal half, the feather flags have diffuse white spots along their entire length.
The breast is matt black-brown and shines purple to magenta in color. On the belly, this black-brown turns into a cinnamon tone and is narrowly banded across black.
distribution
In the interior of eastern New Guinea there is an approximately 200 kilometers wide, ramified mountain range, which is characterized by steep valleys and inaccessible plains. The narrow-tailed paradise magpie occurs here in a small distribution area that touches the Papua-New Guinean provinces of Enga , Hela , Western Highlands and Southern Highlands . The range includes the Hagen Mountains and Mount Giluwe .
The habitat of the narrow-tailed paradise magpie are mountain and sub-alpine forests. It is also found at forest edges, in isolated forest remnants, in forests with selective logging and in forests in which there are individual areas with secondary forest .
Food and foraging
Narrow-tailed paradise stars look for food in all areas of the forest from the ground to the top of the tree. Slightly more often than in the upper and middle crown area they are in an area of up to 15 meters above the ground. The diet consists of around 90 percent fruits, but also flowers and flower buds. The food is picked directly from the branches. Radiation aralia play a special role in nutrition . They are mostly solitary looking for food, but there are also small groups of up to three individuals. Compared to bird species such as the papualori or the broad-tailed paradise hop , the narrow- tailed paradise magpie is more assertive and drives it out of fruit-bearing trees.
Reproduction
Narrow-tailed paradise stars are polygynous : a male can mate with several females and the female alone raises the offspring. It has not yet been clarified, however, whether and how in the Stephanie paradise elster there is a common courtship of several males. As is often the case with bird species in which the not yet sexually mature males have plumage that closely resembles the adult female, it is not always certain whether the birds present with a plumage that corresponds to that of an adult female are actually females .
Courtship
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The males' courtship has only been observed a few times so far. What is certain is that the courtship consists of jumps between two or more sitting waiting on branches. As with the intense courtship of the Stephanie paradise magpie, these can be very fast. However, the males often remain in one place for up to 30 or 40 seconds. On one occasion there were three adult males and four individuals with the plumage of an adult female present. They observed for an hour how the males courted and chased each other away. The jumping males call very loudly and raise their breast plumage. Another courting male jumped up and down in one place. This movement caused his long, white pair of control springs to swing back and forth, making large arcs.
Once a male was observed in a flight that did not correspond to typical flight behavior. It is classified as a courtship flight by Frith and Beehler. The noise made by the wings during this flight was louder than usual for narrow-tailed paradise stars. The flight consisted of four or five wing beats, then a glide phase, in which the male first glided down with folded wings and then glided up again before flapping his wings again. The long, white middle control spring pair was particularly noticeable.
Nest and clutch
Of the 14 nests found and occupied so far, seven were in forest areas in which there had been logging and secondary forest had already grown back. Two more were found in small remains of forest surrounded by subalpine grassland. Ten of the nests were in conspicuously small trees, in the immediate vicinity of which there were no other trees that could tower over them or shade them with their crowns. Several nests from previous breeding seasons were also found in the vicinity of these trees, so that it is concluded that the females have a preference for such forest locations as nesting locations. Basically, places with such conditions in the primary forest are rare. Possibly this is a strategy to keep tree-climbing predators out.
The active nests examined varied in size. In terms of construction, they ranged from fragile to large, stable bowl nests. The building material consisted of leaf parts from screw trees and other large leaves. The nests were sparsely or densely covered by fresh orchid stems, some of which still had leaves. The actual nesting trough was covered with finer dead, almost straw-like, leafless orchid stems.
The clutch comprises a single egg. The eggs have a pink base tone and - as is typical for actual birds of paradise - have elongated spots. These are gray-purple and red-brown in color. The fresh full weight of the eggs is 14.9 grams.
Breeding and rearing of the young birds
It only breeds the female. Up until the end of the 20th century, the breeding season could only be determined in a captive female: she sat on the egg for 21 days before the nestling hatched. In field observations, the female came to the nest twice an hour on average to feed the young bird. The proportion of plant-based food is estimated on the basis of observations at 63 percent. Females initially hoarded the young for about fifty percent of the day. In 17-day-old nestlings, this only accounted for 3 percent of the day. The nestlings fly out between the 22nd and 26th 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.
In the narrow-tailed paradise magpie there are natural hybrids with other species of the star of paradise as well as with other species of the bird of paradise family. So far no type specimens have been collected for crossings with the splendid paradise elster . However, both Clifford Frith and Bruce Beehler consider it very likely that natural hybrids between the two species will occur in the area where the range of the two species overlap. In contrast, hybrids are occupied with the Stephanie paradise elster. The distribution area of the Stephanie-Paradieselster overlaps with that of the narrow-tailed paradise elster, however the narrow-tailed paradise elster usually settles higher than the Stephanie-Paradieselster and displaces them from an altitude of 2400 meters. Once offspring between the narrow-tailed paradise hop and the narrow-tailed paradise magpie was observed. However, the nestling died 10 days after hatching.
Narrow-tailed paradise star and human
hunt
Bellows and individual feathers from birds of paradise are processed by the indigenous ethnic groups of New Guinea into traditional head and body jewelry and also play a major role as a commercial object and in the payment of bridal prices. Basically all birds of paradise are processed with conspicuous feathers, including the conspicuous long tail feathers of paradise stars, as is the case with the traditional headgear of a Huli warrior shown here. The narrow-tailed paradise magpie is exposed to comparatively little hunting pressure because it occurs in a distribution area that is barely populated and, in large parts, very difficult to access.
attitude
Occasionally, narrow-tailed paradise stars are shown in zoological gardens. They survive there for several years. Up until the end of the 20th century, young birds were successfully bred outside of New Guinea. In New Guinea, young birds had also been successfully bred twice by the end of the 20th century.
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 .
- Thane Pratt & Bruce M Behhler. (2015): Birds of New Guinea. Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford, 2nd Edition, ISBN 978-0-691-09563-9 .
Single receipts
- ↑ Handbook of the Birds of the World on the Schmalschwanz-Paradieselster , accessed on July 10, 2017
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 257.
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 268.
- ↑ a b Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 260.
- ↑ a b c Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 258.
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 261.
- ↑ a b Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 262.
- ↑ a b c d Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 263.
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 264.
- ^ McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World. P. 228.
- ↑ a b c McCarthy: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World. P. 229.
- ↑ Frith & Beehler: The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. P. 265.