KING BIRD OF PARADISE


When it comes to courtship, birds of paradise are truly amazing and as varied as their colors. The adult males have plumes, frills, capes, quills, lacy feathers, and/or skirts, with tails that may look like expandable fans, whips, twisted wires, and more, depending on the species. Those tails may look beautiful, but they are not very helpful for flight. Instead, they are meant to help the male show off any number of fantastic dance moves to attract as many females as possible and to outdo rivals. 
The king bird-of-paradise (Cicinnurus regius) is a passerine bird of the Paradisaeidae (Bird-of-paradise) family. It is the sole member of the genus Cicinnurus.
The king bird-of-paradise is distributed throughout lowland forests of New Guinea and nearby islands. The diet consists mainly of fruits and arthropods.
An extraordinary courtship display is performed by the male with a series of tail swinging, fluffing of the white abdominal feathers that makes the bird look like a cottonball, and acrobatic movements of their elongated tail wires.
Widespread and a common species throughout their large habitat range, the king bird-of-paradise is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is listed on Appendix II of CITES.
The first captive breeding of this species was by Dr. Sten Bergman of Sweden in 1958. He was awarded a commemorative medal by the Foreign Bird League to mark this achievement.
This so-called "living gem" is the smallest and most vividly colored among birds-of-paradise. The king bird-of-paradise is small, approximately 16 cm long. The male is crimson and white with bright blue feet and green-tipped fan-like plumes on his shoulder. The two elongated tail wires are decorated with emerald green disk feathers on its tip. The unadorned female is a brown bird with barring below.
-Taken from Wikipedia

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