Errol Fuller - Drawn From Paradise - The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise

Copyright CONTENTS Title Page Copyright Introduction Chapter 1. The First of the Family Genus Paradisaea Chapter 2. The Twelve-wired Bird Genus Seleucidis Chapter 3. The King and his Cousins Genus Cicinnurus Chapter 4. The Head-plumed Dancers Genus Parotia Chapter 5. The Superb Bird Genus Lophorina Chapter 6. The Sicklebills Genus Epimachus and Genus Drepanornis Chapter 7. The Highlanders Genus Astrapia Chapter 8. The Riflebirds Genus Ptiloris Chapter 9. The Final Glories Genus Semioptera and Genus Pteridophora with Genus Astrapia Chapter 10. The Meaning of the Dances Chapter 11. Hybrids Appendix. People Associated with the Discovery and Visual Representation of Birds of Paradise Acknowledgements About the Publisher

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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2012

FIRST EDITION

© David Attenborough & Errol Fuller 2012

Designed by Errol Fuller

The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

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For HarperCollins

Publisher: Myles Archibald

Editor: Dr Jan McCann

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Source ISBN: 9780007487615

Ebook Edition © August 2012 ISBN: 9780007487622

Version: 2016-02-09

Mr Thomson, Animal and Bird Preserver to the Leverian and British Museums (detail). Ramsey Richard Reinagle, c .1800. Oils on canvas. Courtesy of The Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1. The First of the Family

Genus Paradisaea

Chapter 2. The Twelve-wired Bird

Genus Seleucidis

Chapter 3. The King and his Cousins

Genus Cicinnurus

Chapter 4. The Head-plumed Dancers

Genus Parotia

Chapter 5. The Superb Bird

Genus Lophorina

Chapter 6. The Sicklebills

Genus Epimachus and Genus Drepanornis

Chapter 7. The Highlanders

Genus Astrapia

Chapter 8. The Riflebirds

Genus Ptiloris

Chapter 9. The Final Glories

Genus Semioptera and Genus Pteridophora with Genus Astrapia

Chapter 10. The Meaning of the Dances

Chapter 11. Hybrids

Appendix. People Associated with the Discovery and Visual Representation of Birds of Paradise

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

John Gould with a specimen of Count Raggi’s Bird of Paradise (for a more formal reproduction see John Gould). H. R. Robertson, 1878. Oils on canvas. Private collection.

Papuans hunting the Greater Bird of Paradise on the Aru Islands. Engraving by T. W. Wood for A. R. Wallace’s celebrated book The Malay Archipelago (1869). The picture is misleading in that the plumes of the displaying birds are shown as if sprouting from above, instead of beneath the wings.

Nature seems to have taken every precaution that these, her choicest treasures, may not lose value by being too easily obtained. First we find an open, harbourless, inhospitable coast, exposed to the full swell of the Pacific Ocean; next, a rugged and mountainous country, covered with dense forests, offering in its swamps and precipices and serrated ridges an almost impassable barrier to the central regions; and lastly, a race of the most savage and ruthless character… In such a country and among such a people are found these wonderful productions of nature. In those trackless wilds do they display that exquisite beauty and that marvellous development of plumage, calculated to excite admiration and astonishment among the most civilized and most intellectual races of man…

Alfred Russel Wallace. ‘Narrative of Search after Birds of Paradise’, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1862).

End to the Squandering of Beauty (Entry of the Birds of Paradise into Western Thought) . Raymond Ching, August to December, 2011. Oils on canvas, 180 cm × 240 cm (6 ft × 8 ft).

Two or three [men of Aru, New Guinea] begged me for the twentieth time to tell them the name of my country. Then, as they could not pronounce it… they insisted I was deceiving them, that it was a name of my own invention. One old man… was… indignant. ‘Ung-lung!’ said he. ‘Who ever heard of such a name? Ang lang, that can’t be the name of your country’ Then he tried to give a convincing illustration. ‘My country is Wanumbai – anybody can say Wanumbai. But N-glung! Who ever heard of such a name? Do tell us the real name of your country… then when you are gone we shall know how to talk about you.’ The whole party remained convinced I was deceiving them. They then attacked me on another point – what all the animals and birds… were preserved so carefully for. I tried to explain… that they would be stuffed, and made to look as if alive, and people in my country would go to look at them. But this was not satisfying; in my country there must be many better things to look at… They [the Aru men] did not want to look at them [the birds]; and we, who made calico and glass and knives, and all sorts of wonderful things, could not want things from Aru to look at… The old man said to me, in a low, mysterious voice, ‘What becomes of them when you go on to the sea?’ ‘Why, they are all packed up in boxes,’ said I. ‘What did you think became of them?’ ‘They all come to life again, don’t they?’ said he… and he kept repeating, with an air of deep conviction, ‘Yes, they all come to life again, that’s what they do – they all come to life again.’