Family PARADISAEIDAE Vigors, 1825

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• Paradisaeidae Vigors, 1825.

Introduction

The centre of biodiversity of this unique family of brightly plumaged birds with characteristically unusual behaviours is in New Guinea. There has been some expansion into the eastern Moluccan islands and eastern Australia. With 43 species in 18 genera it is a large family group. Only four taxa have established populations in Australia and these are either endemic species or subspecies. The latter are the 'new arrivals' occurring in northern Cape York Peninsula, the other two species, riflebirds, in northern Queensland and central eastern Australia are well established.

All paradisaeids are scansorial and arboreal in broadleaf thickets and shrublands and subtropical rainforest. They glean and probe fruit in search of insects as well as partaking in an insectivorous diet. Normally these birds-of-paradise occur in small groups or as solitary units. They generally show some nomadism or are sedentary. Their loud, curious calls are carry far; males select and maintain a number of song points, often a bare, exposed broken tree trunk. On this perch he displays and sings in order to attract females.

Nests are large shallow cups hidden high within a tangle of leaves or vines. The nests are constructed of vine and/or fern tendrils, often decorated with shed snake skin or similar materials. Completed clutches vary from one to two eggs. Riflebird eggs have a creamy base and are heavily streaked with browns or reddish brown whereas manucode eggs may be pinkish white, spotted or dotted brown, purple or grey.

Diagnosis

'Structurally, birds-of-paradise are typical corvoids (Stonor 1936, 1937, 1938; cf. Bock 1963). Their humeral fossa is simply single, and they have twelve rectrices and ten primaries, the outermost relatively long; secondaries range usually from 10 to 12, more than in most song-birds (also Stephan 1965). The skulls of paradisaeine birds-of-paradise and manucodes are distinctive in combining a sloped fore-cranium and enlarged fused frontal-ectethmoid plate with slender palates in which an extended maxillary shelf covers the nasal floor and palatal aperture from the front towards the back; it ossifies the naris anteriorly and closes, in manucodes, the perforation in the nasal septum. The tip of the vomer is truncate and Corvus-like in form, the maxillo-palatines usually long and linear, and lachrymals of variable form underlie the ectethmoid plate. A slit-like ectethmoid foramen is split variably in two by the fusion of the ectethmoid plate with the frontal; and the wings to the ectethmoids are commonly small and narrowed, more in paradisaeines than manucodes. Temporal fossae are also rather large and flanked by stubby postorbital and zygomatic processes.'

Diagnosis References

Bock, W.J. 1963. Relationships between the birds of paradise and the bower-birds. Condor 65: 95-125

Schodde, R. & Mason, I.J. 1999. The Directory of Australian Birds : Passerines. A Taxonomic and Zoogeographic Atlas of the Biodiversity of Birds in Australia and its Territories. Collingwood, Australia : CSIRO Publishing x 851 pp.

Stephan, B. 1965. Die Zahl der Armschwingen bei den Passeriformes. Journal of Ornithology 106: 446-458

Stonor, C.R. 1936. The evolution and mutual relationships of some of the Paradiseidae. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1936: 1177-1185

Stonor, C.R. 1937. On the systematic position of the Ptilonorhynchidae. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 107B: 475-490

Stonor, C.R. 1938. Some features of the variation of the Birds of Paradise. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 108B: 417-481

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