The Whole Lower Part Of The Body Is Rich Buffy Yellow, Including The Tuft Of Plumes Which Spring From The Sides, And Extend An Inch And A Half Beyond The Tail.

When skins are exposed to the light the yellow fades into dull white, from which circumstance it derived its specific name.

About six of the innermost of these plumes on each side have the midrib elongated into slender black wires, which bend at right angles, and curve somewhat backwards to a length of about ten inches, forming one of those extraordinary and fantastic ornaments with which this group of birds abounds. The bill is jet black, and the feet bright yellow. (See lower figure on the plate at the beginning of this chapter).

The female, although not quite so plain a bird as in some other species, presents none of the gay colours or ornamental plumage of the male. The top of the head and back of the neck are black, the rest of the upper parts rich reddish brown; while the under surface is entirely yellowish ashy, somewhat blackish on the breast, and crossed throughout with narrow blackish wavy bands.

The Seleucides alba is found in the island of Salwatty, and in the north-western parts of New Guinea, where it frequents flowering trees, especially sago-palms and pandani, sucking the flowers, round and beneath which its unusually large and powerful feet enable it to cling. Its motions are very rapid. It seldom rests more than a few moments on one tree, after which it flies straight off, and with great swiftness, to another. It has a loud shrill cry, to be heard a long way, consisting of "Cah, cah," repeated five or six times in a descending scale, and at the last note it generally flies away. The males are quite solitary in their habits, although, perhaps, they assemble at pertain times like the true Paradise Birds. All the specimens shot and opened by my assistant Mr. Allen, who obtained this fine bird during his last voyage to New Guinea, had nothing in their stomachs but a brown sweet liquid, probably the nectar of the flowers on which they had been feeding. They certainly, however, eat both fruit and insects, for a specimen which I saw alive on board a Dutch steamer ate cockroaches and papaya fruit voraciously. This bird had the curious habit of resting at noon with the bill pointing vertically upwards. It died on the passage to Batavia, and I secured the body and formed a skeleton, which shows indisputably that it is really a Bird of Paradise. The tongue is very long and extensible, but flat and little fibrous at the end, exactly like the true Paradiseas.

In the island of Salwatty, the natives search in the forests till they find the sleeping place of this bird, which they know by seeing its dung upon the ground. It is generally in a low bushy tree. At night they climb up the trap, and either shoot the birds with blunt arrows, or even catch them alive with a cloth.

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