COVER STORY: SPECIES PROFILE
NEW Guinea is the world's largest tropical island and the second largest island (after Greenland). It is a bird paradise, with 780 species, almost half of which are found nowhere else. It is mostly here and on certain neighbouring islands where birds of paradise have evolved: the birds that have the most flamboyant plumage and dramatic courtship displays of any bird family. Their skins (the preserved head and plumage) are believed to have been traded for 5,000 years before the first ones arrived in Europe in 1600 (minus wings and feet). This perpetuated the myth that these “birds of the gods”, as they had long been known, inhabited the heavens and never descended to earth. Other commentators believed the skins were fakes, like those regularly created by
