and highly specialised task of deducing from a dried feathered skin what the bird must have looked like in life. The drawing was then transferred to lithographic stone, either by the original artist or by a draughtsman specialising in such work, and from this an edition of several hundred black and white copies were printed. Each print was then coloured individually by hand to match the original drawing.
The parts, each with its dozen or so plates, were then sent to subscribers over a period that sometimes extended for several years before the entire work was complete. Often, Gould would add new parts to the number listed in his prospectus, as new species were discovered Sometimes, he would start on a completely new project before its predecessor was finished. His Himalayan Birds were followed by The Birds of Europe. Then came a survey of the toucan family and another of trogons. After that he tackled The Birds of Australia and started on yet another long-running series devoted to hummingbirds. And in 1875 he began work on The Birds of New Guinea and engaged as one of the primary artists, an Irishmen, William Hart, (1830–1908) who had already worked on several of his previous volumes.
Lesser Birds of Paradise, male and female. Hand coloured lithograph by Joseph Wolf and Joseph Smit from D. G. Elliot’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1873).
Lesser Birds of Paradise, males. William Hart, c.1875. Oils on canvas, 34 cm × 24 cm (13½ in × 9½ in). Private collection.
Goldie’s Bird of Paradise, male and immature male. William Hart, c.1875. Oils on canvas, 34 cm × 24 cm (13½ in × 9½ in). Private collection.
At least two of Hart’s oil studies survive. One of these shows Goldie’s Bird, which has red plumes and the artist, perhaps becoming confused by the illustration in Wallace’s own book, shows them, incorrectly, as being erected beneath the wings rather than being raised above them.
The subject of the other study, a Lesser Bird, is apparently in display but also shows the plumes incorrectly raised and they droop rather limply instead of trembling as Wallace so vividly describes.
Maybe Wallace commented on these attempts, for by now he was well settled in Britain and in touch with London’s circle of naturalists and scientists. Whether he did or not, the plate of the Lesser Bird that Hart eventually produced for Gould is a great improvement. It shows the bird in almost a correct display posture – tail depressed, wings erect, with its plumes raised above its back, and squawking vigorously.
But it was left to William Cooper, in 1977, illustrating a monograph written by Joseph Forshaw, to finally produce a truly accurate picture of one of these Paradisea species at the height of its ecstasy. The species in question is the red-plumed Count Raggi’s Bird, and Cooper’s painting, used on the dust wrapper of his book, shows – in exquisite detail – a male, head lowered beneath the branch on which it perches, displaying his magnificent plumes in a great scarlet fountain above his back, while a female watches critically.
Still life with Sword, Velvet and Lesser Bird of Paradise. Dirk de Bray, 1672. Oils on canvas, 37 cm × 52 cm (15 in × 21 in). Private collection.
But one species in the genus stands apart from the other six. It does not have a golden head or an iridescent bib like all the others in the genus. Instead its head and body are a comparatively sober black. But its wing feathers and its plumes are blue, pale on its wings and intense in its plumes. And yet on their reverse side these same plumes are coloured rust red. Indeed, the species is so different that some authorities believe it should be given a genus of its own. It was discovered in 1884 by the German explorer Carl Hunstein in the then little-explored mountain range that runs down the centre of eastern New Guinea. Hunstein sent this specimen to another ornithologist, Otto Finsch, who duly named it Paradisaea rudolphi after Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria. In Finsch’s ingratiating dedication he described the Prince as ‘the high and mighty protector of ornithological researchers over the entire world’. Sadly the prince was to become rather more famous a few years later for dying in a suicide pact with his lover at a hunting lodge at Mayerling.
Lesser Bird of Paradise, with plumes of exaggerated length. Wilhelm Kuhnert. Oils on canvas, c.1900. Size and whereabouts unknown.
Count Raggi’s Bird of Paradise, male and female. William T. Cooper. Watercolour, produced for the dust wrapper of Cooper and Forshaw’s book The Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds (1977), 60 cm × 42 cm (24 in × 17 in).
By the time of this species’ discovery, John Gould was dead and his book on New Guinea birds had been completed by his friend Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847–1909), who was in charge of ornithology at London’s Natural History Museum. But so many new species of birds of paradise had now been identified that Sharpe took on another task – to publish a work devoted exclusively to the family (together with the bowerbirds that were then thought to be closely related). Many of the plates were taken from Gould’s earlier work. Some were redrawn, and new plates of the latest discoveries were added, drawn once again by William Hart. Among these was the Blue Bird.
It is one of Hart’s more awkward compositions. The male stands on a branch above the female, feathers fanned out to either side, breast shield extended with a slightly wider, darker fan beneath and a pair of long, ribbon-like wires tipped with small blue discs, extending downwards. Clearly Hart was attempting to show the male in display, but he could hardly have posed the bird in a more inaccurate way. He can scarcely be blamed because the male Blue Bird, when he attempts to attract a female, puts on one of the most improbable performances of the entire family.
Unlike all the rest of the Paradisaea genus, the male does not display alongside others. Instead, each has his own display perch in the forest, a gently sloping branch usually within a metre or so of the ground. The owner arrives in the early morning, often alighting high in the canopy above, and calls to announce his forthcoming performance. Then he descends to his perch. Holding tight with his toes, he slowly swings backwards until he is hanging upside down and facing in the opposite direction. Now he expands his plumes so that they form a shimmering triangular fan that covers almost his entire body with its point beneath his neck. The two wires in his tail, now pointing upwards, fall in an arc on either side.
Male Prince Rudolph’s Blue Bird showing the surprising rust colour on the reverse of the blue plumes. Errol Fuller, 1994. Oils on panel, 40 cm × 25 cm (16 in × 10 in).
Male and female Blue Birds. Hand-coloured lithograph by William Hart from R. Bowdler Sharpe’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1891–98).
He begins to call, narrowing his white-lidded eyes until they are almost shut. As he does so he expands a patch of black feathers, rimmed with a rusty red on the edge near his feet. This now begins to pulse. With each expansion, a horizontal wave of shimmering ultramarine ripples upwards across the fan. And then he sings – if the sound he makes can be called a song. It is best described, perhaps, as an electronic buzzing interspersed with the shaking shuffle of maracas and a few random croaks, and it is unlike any other sound that comes from a bird’s throat.
The Australian artist William Cooper is one of the