Beautiful Birds

by Edmund Selous

Yes, he is a wonder, is the Black Bird of Paradise, though I must tell you that he has not any of those long, silky feathers that hang down like cascades and shoot up like fountains, from the sides of those other Birds of Paradise I have been telling you about. And he has no long “funny feathers” in his tail either. You see he cannot have everything, and his crest and shield are instead of those. They are not quite so beautiful, perhaps, but I think they are still more wonderful. Even when his crest—his helmet—is laid down and his shield is not stuck out, the Black Bird of Paradise is a wonder, but when he raises the one up and shoots the other out, both at the same time, and says to the hen, “Look at me!” and all the colours that have been asleep in the helmet, or awake in the shield, gleam and flash and sparkle together, ah, then he is a wonder of wonders.

Then, do you think he is a bird that ought to be killed and killed and killed, only to have those beautiful, bronzy-black crests, and satiny-green, gleaming shields of his set in hats where they soon get dull and dusty, and where he can never raise them up or shoot them out or pay proper attention to them—because he is dead, dead, dead? Is he to be killed and killed till he is gone for ever, and there is not one more beautiful Black Bird of Paradise in the whole world? Oh no, no, no; it ought not to be so—it must not, it shall not—because you will prevent it—yes, you. You will turn to your mother now, this minute, if she is there, if she is reading this to you, or, if not, you will run to her—oh, so quickly, so quickly—and ask her, beg her—keep on asking and asking, begging and begging her to promise—till she has promised—never, never to buy a hat that has a beautiful Black Bird of Paradise in it.

Now, as I have said that the Black Bird of Paradise is such a very wonderful bird—as I have even called him a “wonder of wonders”—perhaps you will think that there is no other Bird of Paradise quite so wonderful as he is. Well, I do not wonder at your thinking so; and, do you know, whilst I was describing him to you and telling you how wonderful he was, I thought so too. But I had forgotten the Blue Bird of Paradise.

The Blue Bird of Paradise is quite as wonderful as the Black one. Perhaps—but mind I only say perhaps—he is even a little more wonderful. To begin with, blue is a very uncommon colour for a Bird of Paradise to be of. None of the Birds of Paradise that I have told you about have feathers that are really blue. There are blue lights, I know, in some of their feathers, especially on the head, but still they are not quite blue. You could hardly call them blue feathers, for there is a green light or a purple light as well as a blue light in them, which makes them bluey-green or greeny purple, or, at any rate, green or purple and blue, not just blue by itself. And then, as you know, sometimes all those lights go to sleep and then the feathers are black. I do not think there is any Bird of Paradise except the Blue Bird of Paradise whose feathers are really and truly blue, and I am quite sure that there is no other one—at least that we know of—which has so much blue about it, that you would think of it as a blue bird, or that has blue feather-fountains—those wonderful long silky plumes that grow out of each side under the wings.

That is what is most wonderful in the Blue Bird of Paradise. There is no other Bird of Paradise that can sit under a blue fountain or look out of a blue sunset. But the plumes of the Blue Bird of Paradise are not so long as those of the Great or the Lesser Bird of Paradise, and when he spreads them out they go more on each side of him than up over his head, and, for this reason, I think, he looks more as if he was looking out of a sunset than sitting under a fountain. You have seen a beautiful sunset often; there will be blue in it somewhere, cool, lovely lakes or bays, or long, stretching inlets, of the loveliest, purest, most delicate blue. But the clouds that float in those bays and lakes like islands, or that shut them in and make their shores, like great burning continents, are not blue, but rosy red or fiery crimson or molten gold or golden-crimson flame. That, at least, is what the brightest ones are like, those that are gathered nearest round the sun. Now, if they could keep all their brightness and glowingness and be blue instead of rose or crimson or gold, then it would be a blue sunset; and that is what the sunset is like that the Blue Bird of Paradise looks out of, when he spreads out his plumes, just as the sunset that the Red Bird of Paradise looks out of, when he spreads out his plumes, is like a red sunset—only of feathers, of course. One is a blue feather-sunset, and the other a red feather-sunset.

And how soft those feathers are, those wonderful, blue sunset-feathers of the wonderful Blue Bird of Paradise. Oh, I cannot tell you how softly they droop down over his breast, or how softly—how very softly—each feather touches the other one, upon it. How softly, I wonder—for I know you will want me to say. As softly as a snowflake falls upon snow? Oh, more softly than that. As softly as two gossamers are blown together in the air? Still more softly, even. As softly, then, as your mother kisses you when you are asleep, and she does not wish to wake you? Yes, I think it is as softly, or almost as softly, as that. Those are two of the very softest kisses—when your mother kisses you when you are asleep, so as not to wake you, and when the soft blue feathers of the plumes on each side of a Blue Bird of Paradise, meet and kiss each other on its breast.

Now that is all I am going to tell you about the front part of the Blue Bird of Paradise—for those wonderful blue feathers that grow on each side become the front part of him when he spreads them out. You see, they open out like two fans, with the handles turned towards each other, and meet together on the breast and above the head, so as to make one large fan or screen. Of course there is something behind this screen, and through it peeps the head of the bird, which is very pretty too. But you don't look at his head, you don't seem to see it. All you see or look at are those beautiful, beautiful plumes, that lovely screen, that wonderful soft blue feather-sunset.

As for the back part of this wonderful Blue Bird of Paradise, well, that is blue too, most of it—a handsome blue, a lovely blue, a gleaming, shining, glossy, satiny blue that looks darker when you see it from one side, and lighter when you see it from another, and which gleams and glints and is very resplendent (which is a word your mother will explain to you) however you look at it. Oh, a glorious blue, a magnificent blue, but not such a blue as the blue of those soft lovely feathers that spread out on each side and curl over and meet and kiss each other so softly, on the breast. And the head and neck of the Blue Bird of Paradise (for sometimes he puts them behind the screen, and then they are the back part of him) are of a soft velvet brown that, as you look at it, becomes a soft velvet-claret-magenta colour (which your mother knows all about and will explain to you), and in his tail there are two long “funny feathers” that hang down from the bough he is sitting on, and—and now you must try to imagine him. When you have imagined him—or before you have, if you are not able to—you must make your mother promise—now what? You know, of course. You must make her promise never to wear a hat with a Blue Bird of Paradise's feathers in it.

Now we come to the Golden or Six-shafted Bird of Paradise, who lives just in one part of New Guinea—that long part at the north that goes out into the sea, and which we call a peninsula; you have only to look at the map and you will see it. Now I think of it, the Superb or Black Bird of Paradise—or shall we say the Superb Black Bird of Paradise?—lives there too, so I daresay they sometimes see each other. Perhaps they call on each other, for, you see, they are both of them distinguished. One is superb and the other golden, and when two people are like that they do not mind calling upon one another. You see, neither of them can be hurt by it then. A superb person may call upon even a golden person, and yet feel quite well after it, and it will not do a golden person any harm at all to call upon a superb person. So, if birds are like people, I feel sure that sometimes the Golden and the Superb Bird of Paradise call upon each other.

Now you will want to know why this Bird of Paradise is called both the Golden and the Six-shafted Bird of Paradise. Well, he is called the Golden Bird of Paradise because he has lovely golden feathers on his throat and breast, and he is called the Six-shafted Bird of Paradise because six little arrows—for that is what they look like—seem to have been shot into his head, three on each side—arrows, you know, are sometimes called shafts. These little shafts or arrows are six inches long—almost as long as the bird itself—and bend right back over his body, as far as to the tail. Of course each of them is really a feather—an arrow that is all feather—but it is a “funny feather” with only the quill, which is very thin and slender, till quite the end, where there is just a little oval piece of the soft web—the part that looks really like a feather—left upon it. That is what makes them look like arrows. But is it not curious that the “funny feathers” of this Bird of Paradise are in his head instead of in his tail? I think it must be because Dame Nature wanted to make him a little different.