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. In New
Guinea they are caught by placing snares on the trees frequented
by them, in the same way as the Red Paradise birds are caught in
Waigiou, and which has already been described at page 362.
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