Original subtitles

Imagine creatures so beautiful...

that people thought they had come down directly from Heaven.

So striking...

that the first Europeans to see them

thought they could only have escaped from the Garden of Eden.

In fact, that Eden was New Guinea...

..one of the last inhabited islands to be explored by Europeans.

And it remains virtually the only place

where you can see these wonderful creatures.

They were birds,

but unlike birds that anyone had ever seen before.

They brought the image of beauty almost to the edge of absurdity.

And their displays

were even more extraordinary and bizarre than their appearance

some of the most complex to be found in the animal kingdom.

They may not have come from the Garden of Eden,

but they certainly deserved the name

that the first European scientists gave them -

the birds of paradise.

Yet much of what they do is still unknown.

More than 150 years after

the first scientific observations of these creatures,

in spite of innumerable expeditions

and countless hours of scientific observation,

we are still only catching glimpses - tantalising glimpses -

of these heavenly creatures.

A new generation of scientists, and film crews,

are attempting to put that right.

But these remarkable birds don't give up their secrets easily.

Another expedition is setting off to look for birds of paradise.

But this one is different.

This one is being mounted by the New Guinea people themselves.

A new generation of local conservationists

are concerned that paradise bird numbers may be falling.

(TWO-TONE SQUAWKING)

(HIGH-PITCHED THRUMMING)

This team is led by Miriam Supuma.

With her is bird expert Paul Igag.

MIRIAM: Ah! I've got my knickers wet! (LAUGHING)

Miriam's love of nature began in a small village school in the mountains.

To follow that passion,

she learned English,

got herself to university, and finished her ecology fieldwork in Australia.

Over the next three months,

she aims to see and document ten birds of paradise species.

She has agreed to let our camera crew go with her.

They're starting with the smallest of the family -

the king bird.

Miriam searches for signs.

You have to know what to look for... and she does.

You can see peck marks on this fruit here.

(REPEATED CHIRPS)

That's his call,

but she just can't see him.

It tends to like this area.

One of the reasons is because of the light coming through.

They're show-off birds, so they like to show their plumage

and the light complements their bright plumage.

The signs are good.

They decide to build a hide.

It must be big enough to seat her and the camera crew.

But there's a problem.

A dead banana tree blocks the camera's view.

Miriam has it... gently pruned back!

(REPEATED SHRIEKING CALLS)

She's confident the birds will return.

This is the mating season, when they become less shy.

She discovered this when she was still a student.

Working in the forest early one morning,

she spotted a bird of paradise high in the tree tops...

..and below it, another preening its plumes in the morning sun.

(HIGH HONKING)

And then they displayed.

The sight changed her life.

On that day, I noticed about six or seven birds of paradise,

singing and dancing, and it just continued for five or ten minutes.

I stopped what I was doing - I was measuring trees at the time.

I was looking at it - just staring at it in awe.

(REPEATED SHRIEKING CALLS)

Naturalists fall in love with nature and then come back for more.

Seven years on, and experience has taught Miriam

that the best way to observe the male king bird

is to find his display perch and then wait for him to arrive.

Teaches you a lot of patience, doesn't it?

And patience can often pay off.

Oh, there it is. Wow!

The king bird.

It's facing that way with its back towards us.

You can see the red back.

It's gone up into the canopy.

He's a deep chilli-pepper red with a snow-white breast.

Two long quills sprout from his tail,

each tipped by a green disc like a coin.

That was a...that was a rare moment.

Oh, there - there it is again. Wow!

She's thrilled.

With other males calling in the forest nearby,

Miriam is sure that she's found a good population here.

(NEARBY BIRD CHEEPING)

(TWO-TONE SQUAWKS)

The male king bird will call to the females in the area.

If none come, he will perform without them.

After puffing himself up,

he flicks his quills above his head and waggles them,

making the little discs dance in the air above him.

(TWO-TONE SQUAWKS)

He's still hoping for an audience.

Undeterred, he ends with a flourish.

He swings upside down and locks his legs...

..and then he turns himself into a pendulum.

(TWO-TONE SQUAWKS)

The king bird is a soloist.

The males of many other species display in groups.

(REPEATED HOOTING)

(HIGHER-PITCHED, QUICKER HOOTING)

These are the greater birds of paradise.

Males assemble every day in one special tree, waiting for a female to arrive.

When one does, they all snap into action.

(URGENT HOOTING)

And she selects the one she prefers.

She's rewarded with a one-on-one, starting with pecks on the head.

And eventually she accepts him.

While all the males may appear equally gorgeous to our eyes,

females apparently detect differences.

What's more, they nearly all mate with the same male.

By selecting the finest plumes in this way,

the females have increased the males' beauty, generation after generation,

and so brought these magnificent dances into existence.

(AEROPLANE ENGINE THROBS)

The spectacular beauty of their birds fascinates the people of New Guinea,

as I discovered back in 1957.

I knew that the bird of paradise plumes were important,

and I quickly discovered just how important.

The plumes are the equivalent of money

and an essential payment in the bargaining that goes on between families

when fixing a wedding settlement...

(SINGING AND CHANTING)

..and when men want to dance.

And what I saw 50 years ago is still going on today.

Goroka Town, in the heart of the mountains.

It's festival time and feathers are still essential headwear.

Go, go with the photograph if you can, or...

It's a key moment in the year for Miriam's research.

Look at these and then look at what's on the headdresses.

The feathers of many different species of bird are used in the headdresses,

and the team want to find out how many come from birds of paradise.

These scenes are not very different from those I filmed myself

half a century earlier.

RECORDING: There were 500 of these men,

stamping up and down monotonously and unceasingly.

And as I watched them, I realised

that here was the reason why no-one had brought us birds of paradise.

NARRATION: Miriam wants to see my footage from 1957

so she can compare the numbers and species used by dancers then and now.

RECORDING: Each man was wearing the feathers of 30 or 40 birds.

At this one dance, we were seeing

the plumes of over 20,000 slaughtered birds of paradise.

NARRATION: The desire to possess the beauty of the birds

is an ancient obsession still alive in these tribal lands.

The island of New Guinea is huge.

1,000 miles long,

lying between Australia and the equator,

it was pushed up from the bottom of the sea way back in geological time.

A few land mammals from Australia managed to get here,

including some marsupials such as the strange tree kangaroo.

But there are no indigenous carnivorous mammals here.

With fruit growing all the year round, this is indeed a paradise for birds.

(PLAINTIVE CRYING)

Then, some 30,000 years ago,

the greatest threat to their existence walked in on two legs.

But today, there are people here whose only aim is to protect the birds.

Paul Igag was brought up on the coast, a fisherman's son.

Paul gave up the fishing life to study biology.

He married a highland girl

and stayed up here to pursue his love of forest birds.

(BIRDS WHISTLE AND CHIRP)

(PLAINTIVE CRYING)

The call of the raggiana bird of paradise.

(CRYING)

(WHISPERS) You can see a male up there with full adult plumage.

He's trying to attract females.

Paul has seen many of the forest's rarest bird species.

He builds platforms in the canopy where he can sit quietly and wait.

Some birds are quite bold and seem undisturbed by his presence.

(WHIRRING SQUAWKS)

Others are much more wary, like the magnificent rifle bird of paradise.

Paul has been watching the birds intensively for over 15 years.

(WHIRRING SQUAWKS)

His tracking skills are crucial to the project.

(DISTANT HOOTING AND WHISTLING)

Together, Paul and Miriam start to identify

the bird populations that may need protection.

(WHIRRING SQUAWKS)

Paul is taking Miriam to a remote village southeast of Goroka.

(MUSIC DROWNS SPEECH)

As I did on my own journey to the interior,

they have to cross high mountain ranges blanketed by forest.

Between these walls of rock lie immense valleys like the Wahgi.

Hundreds of tribes have lived on the island for thousands of years,

separated by these barriers of water and rock.

800 languages have evolved,

some as different from one another as English is to Chinese.

The language of Haia village is spoken only here.

Even today, the only contact between these people and the outside world

is the plane that takes away their coffee beans.

It's a warm welcome back for Paul.

He's been coming here for the last few years to help map tribal boundaries.

This forest belongs to the Haia people.

They have always been hunters,

but now they are helping to record the rich wildlife.

One day, all this may become a protected reserve.

For now, it's hundreds of square miles of untouched mountain forest.

For the villagers, a wildlife reserve could bring work and education.

There's a lot at stake.

The locals' hunting knowledge is invaluable for the project.

Paul and Miriam need to find natural paths and trees in fruit

if they are to locate all the threatened species.

The three foot long tail feathers of the male black sicklebill

are the reason why his kind is almost extinct locally.

His plumes fetch the highest prices

but hunting here has now been banned.

This trip is to find two special birds of paradise

that are still unprotected by law.

One of them can sometimes be seen in the very early mornings,

busy on the floor of the darkest parts of the forest.

Miriam is looking for the parotia bird of paradise,

a bird with a very special dance.

The male parotia is most particular about where he dances,

and this could be the place.

Paul is looking for the magnificent bird of paradise,

a bird which also displays close to the ground,

and is therefore very vulnerable to hunters.

"Well, that's it," I said.

"That's the display court, and we're going to get him there."

We didn't want to spend a long time in that area because...

we want to come back and see the birds, or...

our presence there might, you know... you know like spoil everything.

(THUNDER)

Six inches of rain can fall in a single day on Crater Mountain.

And during the downpours,

the birds of paradise shelter beneath the leaves.

MIRIAM: I was sitting in the hide

thinking we might not get to see anything because it did rain.

(WHISPERS) Bloody mosquitoes.

And then I heard a male parotia.

There were other males calling as well.

NARRATION: Black as the blackest night,

he seems to absorb all the light around him.

He is Lawes's parotia.

On his head, six strange wire-like plumes,

each tipped with a black pennant.

On his chest, a shield of iridescent green and gold.

This is his court,

a stage he has carefully cleared so that he can dance unimpeded.

Clearing away last night's leaf fall is essential housekeeping.

A female arrives.

She is comparatively drab with none of his flashy glamour.

She's touring all the courts in the neighbourhood to choose a mate.

He sets about impressing her.

But one of his rivals has called by uninvited.

And he is followed by others.

More females arrive and take up seats for the performance.

(SQUAWKING)

Tensions rise but nobody dances.

Suddenly, one of the intruders mates with a female.

Another male does the same.

The court has become a free-for-all.

It's not what Miriam expected.

(WHISPERS) They just went straight into mating without even any dance at all.

(WHISPERS) It's almost like skipping dinner and getting straight into dessert.

It would be nice to see them actually dancing.

Sitting in the hide for three or four hours isn't fun with all the mosquitoes,

and you'd like to go away feeling that you'd seen, you know the whole performance.

NARRATION: It's possible that the birds had been disturbed

by the presence of humans in the forest around.

It will be several days before they venture back

to try another filming session.

Paul has been searching for the magnificent bird of paradise

for a few days now,

listening for their calls and quietly assessing their numbers.

He recently saw one far from here in the town market.

All birds of paradise have a street value.

It's not illegal for local people to hunt them or sell them.

They're a way of making some cash.

PAUL: This is a magnificent bird of paradise.

The hunters have mounted the bird's skin, complete with feathers, on a stick,

ready to be stuck into a headdress.

Another bird wanders by.

A pheasant pigeon, feeding on the forest floor.

But this is a female magnificent.

And here's another.

(WHISPERS) There's the female.

Things look promising.

They can only have come for one reason.

A flicker of gold and there he is -

the magnificent bird of paradise.

The male magnificent is clearing away leaves that have fallen on his court.

Doves and pigeons are helping by picking up a few seeds.

He's stripping away moss and leaves,

letting shafts of sunlight into his display court.

He wants to look his best.

PAUL: It's really interesting to see a magnificent bird of paradise.

The feathers are quite bright and you could see it out there.

It's like a... like a flame.

The stage seems set but there's a distraction -

another male.

There's a standoff between the two males...

Then the females take action.

Surprisingly, they charge the intruder...

(SHORT, SHARP CALLS)

..and drive him out.

With his stage now to himself,

the court-maker can give the most interested female all his attention.

He begins to transform himself for her.

Puffing and pulsing his breast feathers

creates a special effect -

an emerald-green, heart-shaped breast shield

to dazzle her with.

Next to his eyes, two tiny iridescent spots

flash at her.

You might think that this little jewel of a bird was one of a kind.

But he has a cousin on an offshore island

that, in isolation, has changed into a different species.

Wilson's bird of paradise.

Both have those sickle-shaped tail quills.

But his cousin has a bald head.

And his scalp is blue.

And whereas the magnificent's back is golden yellow,

his cousin's back has turned red.

Different populations isolated in different areas

are still evolving different plumes

to match the tastes of the local females.

PAUL: We were thinking, "When is mating taking place?

"When is mating taking place?"

It's an activity that probably goes on for a while,

until only the birds know when it is the right time.

It's Paul's first sighting of a magnificent bird of paradise

after 15 years working in the forest.

Several days later,

Miriam returns to the court of the parotia.

The male is back on his dancing ground.

But the camera can't get a proper view.

A log has dropped.

It's too late to build another hide.

Instead, the crew has to make adjustments.

The log is propped up.

There is a risk, of course,

that the court owner will notice the change

and never come back.

But he does.

It's a very promising start.

He removes little bits of litter

and prepares to perform one of the most complex dance routines

in the whole bird world.

But now there's trouble - an intruder. Another male.

(AGGRESSIVE SQUAWKING)

But the owner of the court is not put off.

And that is how it's supposed to be.

Seeing the parotia dance

gives Miriam an insight into the intimate rituals of her people.

MIRIAM: When I was sitting in the hide,

I was thinking back to the people here in Papua New Guinea,

they have these gatherings where they go into a hut and they...

sit in a row and alternate male-female, male-female.

They start singing and rocking their heads back and forth.

It's like picking out someone they fancy.

I can understand why, when they do their traditional dance,

they put the feathers on.

Probably, to them, it represents something that's... that's kind of sacred

they find in the forest,

and because of the birds' behaviour, it's a very unique and special bird.

NARRATION: Papuans are steeped in the mysteries of their tribal past.

Nobody knows it all,

only that birds and humans have been together for thousands of years.

The desire to possess the beauty of the birds is an ancient obsession.

Everywhere, the paradise birds are hunted and their plumes treasured...

and stored on the rafters in houses throughout the land.

These precious feathers are kept in bamboo tubes,

ready to adorn the bodies of a new generation,

to help them begin a new cycle of human life.

(DRUMMING AND SINGING)

Miriam and her team are counting feathers.

She wants clues as to which birds are suffering most from hunting.

They question the dancers about where and how they got their feathers.

(HE SPEAKS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE)

She's keen to know about one species in particular.

What I have here is the blue bird of paradise.

I've seen it worn by some of the highlanders on the headdress.

NARRATION: It's a very vulnerable bird and its feathers fetch high prices.

MIRIAM: It's been hunted heavily in the past.

I haven't seen it displayed in the wild

and if I did, that would be something.

NARRATION: In the meantime, beliefs die hard,

but among them, there are some that can actually protect the birds.

There's a fear of angering the spirit world.

And where spirits live, hunters will not go.

PAUL: Imagine a mountain that is covered in forest.

No-one goes up there. People believe that there is a spirit up there.

People don't touch that mountain, so that forest remains intact.

For us, working in conservation, it works perfectly -

it leaves that place unspoiled.

NARRATION: Early one morning, Paul and Miriam

begin climbing up to part of the forest where hunters fear to tread

to look for two special birds of paradise.

Different species live at different altitudes, depending on the rainfall

and the type of fruit trees growing at different levels.

Even today, not a great deal is known about these birds -

where they nest,

how they raise their young,

where the species overlap, even interbreed.

Biologists are still trying to find the answers.

Field work like this brings its own delights.

MIRIAM: Ah! I got my knickers wet!

(LAUGHING)

MIRIAM: It's a challenge in itself to working -

being a researcher and working in a remote area.

Sometimes you get to spend months and months out in the field

and you miss your comforts in life.

The trade-off is that you get to listen to

birds singing in the morning.

You wake up to that every day.

NARRATION: Miriam is looking for the blue bird of paradise.

In undisturbed forest, she hopes to find populations of birds

that will be less wary of humans.

Paul is looking for the superb bird of paradise,

whose breast feathers are so sought-after.

It calls in the dense mid-canopy,

but it displays on or near the ground and in open spaces.

A large fallen tree and there's a hopeful sign here.

On one side, some of the moss is missing.

Small dancing feet could have rubbed it away.

This could be a good place to watch for the superb.

But the weather is not good.

(WIND GUSTS)

In wind and rain, birds, like people, take shelter.

There is nothing to be done except wait for a break in the weather.

It's now getting late in the birds' breeding cycle.

Their displays are becoming less frequent and intense.

It's been six days since the team built the hide

beside the fallen tree.

Paul arrives in the rain at five each morning,

and leaves in the rain at noon.

And the fallen tree is just remaining a fallen tree.

In a damp thicket, Miriam is keeping vigil for the blue bird.

Day seven,

and finally a visitor to Paul's log,

but it's only a ground dove.

(SHRIEKING CALL)

That's the call of the superb.

He's making an advertising call from a high point.

(SQUAWKING)

And it's not far from Paul's hide.

(SQUAWKING)

(WHISPERS) It's nearby.

NARRATION: After many days of solid rain,

the birds are quickly becoming active again.

Miriam's bird, a blue bird,

has come to the edge of the thicket and is calling.

(WHISPERS) I wonder if that's the same bird or two different birds.

Paul's bird is calling non-stop.

(SHRIEKING CALLS)

And there he is.

There's that fabulous green and blue breast shield.

(SHRIEKING)

He's trying to entice a female down from the canopy.

(SQUAWKING)

But that's not her.

The call seems to irritate him.

And there she is.

He transforms himself.

A black cape appears behind his head.

Then he moves into a trance-like state

and he dances.

(RHYTHMICAL CLICKING)

Success.

And here is that performance again.

All is not what it seems.

Those spots that look like eyes

are in fact feathers reflecting the dawn light.

That clicking noise is not his wings striking the wood,

but quills flicking against one another,

like the clicking of fingers.

Bizarre and beautiful.

No wonder his breast shield is so treasured by human dancers.

It's day nine.

Miriam is still waiting for the blue bird to appear

in the thicket in front of her.

(DISTANT SHRIEKING)

He calls from nearby trees. Could the hide be putting him off?

At last, he comes

and takes up his position on his favourite branch

in his own special way.

(WHISPERS) Wow!

(WHISPERS) It's our lucky day.

(WHISPERS) I've never seen anything like this, this is crazy.

NARRATION: It's a performance of such exquisite beauty,

it seems unfair that no female is here to see it.

He is serenading like a love-struck Romeo,

but the balcony above is empty.

One can only sympathize.

Male birds of paradise have played to empty seats

for hundreds of thousands of years.

It has been their special evolutionary destiny

to spend their lives displaying their beauty.

It's what makes them so extraordinary.

The next morning, the male blue bird returns.

Suddenly, he stops.

Miriam has seen something off camera.

There's a female in the tree above.

(WHISPERS) She's here, she's here.

And now she's here, his performance changes.

His pulsing gives way to a subtle low buzzing that also throbs.

It's barely audible to human ears,

but the microphone picks it up loud and clear.

It's an unearthly sound that he only makes in her presence.

There's nothing like it to be heard anywhere else in the bird world.

(BUZZING AND THROBBING)

MIRIAM: The vibrating movement and the puffing of the chest

to expose the black patch was something intimate.

And It only did that when the female was next to him.

Just looking at it gave you a sense of guilty pleasure, just looking at them.

It was something intimate going on between the two birds.

NARRATION: Moving closer, but without touching him,

the female seems to be studying every feather of his vibrating body.

Surely he's done enough...

..but no.

MIRIAM: And then all of a sudden she just flew away,

and it was like, "Oh, come on!"

For the male to go through all that, it was excruciating,

just to put all that energy into it.

And I think for him it was like, "OK, maybe we'll try another day."

Yeah.

(SQUAWKS)

NARRATION: Yet his effort is the whole point.

Males can but try their best.

The rest is up to the females... and it was ever thus.

(FORLORN SQUAWKING)

The plaintive call of the rejected male echoes across the mountains.

These dances have been performed here for millennia,

but for how much longer?

Miriam and her team have made a good start on their project

but much more work needs to be done.

MIRIAM: We need numbers and in order to do that, we need to do research,

so we need numbers so that we can see how they are fluctuating

within the time and with the different factors -

human population growth, hunting, disturbance, forest clearing -

so we can understand their conservation status better.

NARRATION: Meanwhile, to preserve the feathers that the dancers already have,

the team are handing out mothballs.

These can be put inside the bamboo tubes

in which the feathers are stored and so save them from decay.

That should reduce the demand for freshly hunted plumes.

MIRIAM: If we were to lose one of these birds, or two, it could mean

the loss of something that people hold close to their hearts.

NARRATION: Papua New Guineans are now caring for their birds in a new way.

The birds have survived the tribal culture for thousands of years

but the world is changing

and their forest is changing.

Miriam and Paul are starting a new conservation movement

to ensure that generations to come

will still be able to delight in these astonishing birds of paradise.

Subtitles by JohnCoffey_09