Lawes's Parotia
| Lawes's Parotia | |
|---|---|
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| Lawes's Parotia, Parotia lawesii Male above, female below |
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| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Paradisaeidae |
| Genus: | Parotia |
| Species: | P. lawesii |
| Binomial name | |
| Parotia lawesii E.P. Ramsay, 1885 |
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Lawes's Parotia, Parotia lawesii, is a medium-sized (up to 27 cm long) passerine of the birds of paradise family, Paradisaeidae. It is distributed and endemic to mountain forests of southeast and eastern Papua New Guinea. Occasionally, the Eastern Parotia is considered a subspecies of P. lawesii.
The male is a velvet black bird with an erectile silvery white forehead crest, iridescent purple blue nape and golden green breast plumes (Stavenga 2010). The inside of its mouth is lime-colored. Adorned with three ornamental spatule head wires from behind of each eye and elongated black flank feathers, that spread skirt-like in courtship display (Scholes 2008). The female is a brown bird with dark head, yellow iris and dark-barred yellowish brown below. The iris is colored in various amounts of blue and yellow, changing according to the bird's mood.
Like most birds of paradise, male Lawes's Parotia are polygamous. The clutch contains 1, maybe occasionally 2 eggs; the few eggs that have been studied were about 33 x 24 mm in size, but these were possibly small specimens (Mackay 1990). It eats mainly fruit, seeds and arthropods.
The bird's home was discovered by Carl Hunstein on a mountain near Port Moresby in 1884. Its name honors the New Guinea pioneer missionary Reverend William George Lawes.
Widespread and common throughout its range, Lawes's Parotia is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is listed on Appendix II of CITES.
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Parotia lawesii. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 29 October 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
- Mackay, Margaret D. (1990): The Egg of Wahnes' Parotia Parotia wahnesi (Paradisaeidae). Emu 90(4): 269. PDF fulltext
- Scholes III, Edwin (2008): Structure and composition of the courtship phenotype in the bird of paradise Parotia lawesii (Aves: Paradisaeidae). Zoology 111(2008):260-278. [doi:10.1016/j.zool.2007.07.012]
- Stavenga, Doekele G.; et al. (2010): Dramatic colour changes in a bird of paradise caused by uniquely structured breast feather barbules. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 278: 2098-2104. [doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2293]
[edit] External links
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