Gratitude 22

I am grateful for the Birds of Paradise, Gentle Reader.  They have to be among the most beautifully bizarre, and bizarrely beautiful creatures with feathers.  Some people think they are absolutely lovely, the loveliest birds on earth.  Others think they're bizarre, even ugly.  They live mostly in New Guinea and when they were first discovered, by means of their skins, in the markets of Europe during the seventeenth century they were thought to be birds from heaven, they were seen as so gorgeous.  They were named apodea which is, I think, Latin, for no feet, though it could be Greek, as the skins had had the feet removed.  It was believed that they lived always in the air in a state of perpetual flight.  If Google will be so kind as to provide us with images that are safe for my computer I will share them with you




This is a Blue Bird of Paradise, formerly known as the Prince Rudolf Bird of Paradise, named after Prince Rudolf of Austria, whom, according to Wikipedia

was the only son of Emperor Franz Joseph I and heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire from birth. In 1889, he died in a suicide pact with his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, at the Mayerling hunting lodge.^[1] The ensuing scandal made international headlines.

The European colonial powers of the nineteenth century were like the proverbial octopus, strangling entire cultures all over the world, including those in New Guinea and the local wildlife were often named after their own royalty and other personages.  Ridiculous, eh?


  
This is a Greater Bird of Paradise.  Pretty great, eh?  One of the many wonderful bird books in my home library features a photograph of nearly a dozen of these birds, all dead, for sale in the market, likely for the local people to harvest their plumes for their headdresses.  So sad!

here are images of two of my paintings of this spectacular bird.  I'm afraid I haven't done them justice, though I tried






This  used to be called the Princess Caroline's Bird of Paradise, whoever that British rich bitch was, and I think it's also called the Six Wired Bird of Paradise.  He looks pretty wired, doesn't he?  Wired on lust of course, since he is displaying for a mate.  Or you could call it a form of flashing!  Birds of paradise are notorious sluts in the bird world, like hummingbirds.  They are totally promiscuous and the males, after servicing any number of females, fly off on there own, leaving their former parents with all the nesting and parenting duties and not even a modicum of child support!




This is a Wilson`s Bird of Paradise

Why they call this the Lesser Bird of Paradise is beyond me.  Nothing at all lesser about this beauty.




Here is a Blue Bird of Paradise displaying for a mate.  Oh Baby!  You turn my world upside down!