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Birds and all Nature, Vol. IV, No 4, October 1898

$19.00

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THE KINGBIRD OF PARADISE.



Wouldn’t you little folks like to see a number of us brilliant, gem-like Birds of Paradise flitting among the trees as do your Robins and Woodpeckers and Jays? To see us spreading our wings in the sun, and preening our ruby and emerald and topaz and amethyst tinted plumes, ribbons, and streamers?

Ah, that would be an astonishing sight, but you will have to journey to an island in the South Pacific Ocean to see that; an island whose shores are bathed by a warm sea, and where the land is covered with the most luxuriant tropical vegetation.

It was about three hundred years ago that the people of Europe first knew that such superb birds existed on this earth. Traders visited one of the Malayan islands in search of cloves and nutmegs, and upon leaving, the natives presented them with a few dried skins of a wonderfully beautiful bird. The natives called them “God’s Birds,” and in order to propitiate heaven for killing them, cut off the feet of the dead birds and buried them beneath the tree upon which they were found.

The dried bodies of the birds were exported as time went on, and as the people of Europe had never seen one alive, but always the skin without legs and feet, they came to consider them as heavenly birds, indeed, formed to float in the air as they dwelt in the Garden of Eden, resting occasionally by suspending themselves from the branches of trees by the feathers of their tails, and feeding on air, or the soft dews of heaven. Hence they called us the Birds of Paradise.

It was not till one hundred years after, when a writer and collector of birds visited the island, and spent years in watching and studying us, that the truth became known. Certainly, the gentleman must have laughed, when, instead of heavenly dew, he saw a Bird of Paradise catch a Grass-hopper and holding it firmly by his claws, trim it of wings and legs, then devour it, head first.
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