Priceless Record Of Bird Of Paradise

Thomas Gilliard’s Pictures in National Geographic Magazine

A PRICELESS record of one of our most remarkable creatures, the Bird of Paradise, and of the little-known areas of New Guinea where it is found, has been compiled by Mr. E. Thomas Gilliard, Assistant Curator of Birds, American Museum of Natural History and one of the world’s leading ornithologists.

He visited Central New Guinea in 1950 (under the guidance of wellknown Mr. N. Blood) and again in 1952, and in each case he was assisted by the National Geographic Society.

His record is directed mainly to the birds but, incidentally, in the finest series of coloured photographs ever taken in New Guinea (and faithfully reproduced in the National Geographic Magazine ) he gives us also a description of the primitive men of the New Guinea Highlands.

The first part of the record was published in the National Geographic Magazine of November, 1951. The second, and more important section, is in the Magazine’s April (1953) issue—6s pages of magnificent pictures and exciting letterpress.

The leader of the 1952 expedition was Armand Denis (producer of many fine films). Gilliard was the general manager, and the other members were Robert Doyle, an Australian explorer; Robert Carmet, a French photographer; and Henry Kaltenthaler, a Philadelphia botamst. Mrs. Denis and Mrs. Gilliard, both veterans of expeditions in other parts of the world, accompamed them.

i"|F particular interest to this ex v/ pedition was the most spectacular of all the Birds of Paradise—the King of Saxony. Only one specimen had ever been taken alive to a zoo (to die almost immediately), and no still pictures of it in its native habitat had been made. With movie film and with sound recordings the love-dance of the King was recorded.

Altogether the expedition photo graphed more thai 100 species, most of them never filmed before, in eluding the rare river duck, Salva dorina, and the little mountain parrot, Psittacella picta, discovered by the 1950 expedition. Scientists recognise 42 species of Birds of Paradise; in New Guinea there are 20 known ornamented species. Of these the expedition observed 16 and filmed 12 in colour, Particularly entrancing was Blood’s Sicklebill Bird of Paradise.

Mr. Gilliard built a pandanus thatched shelter near the, bird’s mating tree, 7,300 feet up Mount O- Mar, and one frigid morning watched its performance, which he thus describes: “From its perch the Sicklebill would loose a machine gunlike burst of bass notes. Then, as the sound died away into the cathedral hush of the forest, the bird would begin to drum like a grouse, beating its wings against its sides and making loud, crackling reports which quite mystified us.

It seemed impossible that wings alone could make such a fuss.”

Just as bizarre, in a different way, was the dance of the Princess Step hanie Bird of Paradise. The bird

has a quiet, mewing call and perl forms its dance on trees cloaked irj moss and decorated with ferns and orchids.

The expedition went to Moun] Hagen in search of the elusive Ribbontail and the Golden-crowned Bowerbird, but they were not to be seen.

Then the Magnificent Bird o| Paradise was photographed and at] temps were made to secure picture! and recordings of the Blue Bird of Paradise; but deforestation is wipj ing out its home and the bird is now gravely reduced in numbers!

CAN anything be done to checlj these ravages? asks Mr. GilliarcJ What is needed, he suggests, is a Bird of Paradise reservation, rather like Africa’s Kruger National Park, in which primitive man can be taught to live side by side in harmony with those treasures of Nature that can be found in New Guinea alone. It should not be tod difficult to administer such an area through the Government’s districj officers, who are much respected by the highland natives.

One of the prime objectives of the expedition to New Guinea was to settle whether MacGregor’s is a Bird of Paradise or a bowerbirq The chief difference between the two is that bowerbirds usually deal a bit of ground and build theil courtship chambers there, while Birds of Paradise customarily per] form their love dances in trees. I One of these birds was captured alive and from a close study of it and the natives’ positive assurance] that these birds do not build court] ship chambers on the ground, Mr.

Gilliard says he is willing to take the verdict of local experts that MacGregor’s is a Bird of Paradisa THE latter days of the expedition were spent in filming the Stonl Age natives. An elaborate singl sing held in the realm of a chief named Boma afforded ample oppor* tunities for taking photographs and studying the natives at close quarters.

On the northern slopes of the Gambia region few natives had ever seen steel. This was true Stone Age territory. Besides their low little grass huts lie their own tools —stone axes ground in the age-ol| manner on a dampened sandstone!

Stone for the best of the work axes is quarried from the Jimrafc River, but only the old people seem: to know how to fashion them into: blades. It takes almost three month! of constant toil to make a good stone axe, and another week to com plete a woven stock and handle fori it. Other stone implements are; not common in the Kubors, but they can still be found —clubs, knives,; emblems, “money,” pestles, mortars and even carved birds.

Mr. Gilliard thinks it will not be many years before the ancestral sound of stone upon stone is stilled: for ever.