Tim Laman

| Wildlife Photojournalist

Wildlife Diaries

The Wildlife Diaries newsletter is the best way to keep up to date with Tim Laman’s latest work and travels, and to learn about photography and natural history as well. Read through his recent posts here or sign up to receive the posts via email using the form on the right.

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Lets Celebrate the Birds-of-Paradise #3: Western Parotia

Dear Friends, 

I hope you are all well, and staying safe wherever you are hunkering down during these crazy times.  I’m at home and won’t likely be making my usual field trips any time soon, but I’m still thinking about the amazing Birds-of-Paradise that I enjoy photographing and sharing with you so much.  While I can’t be creating fresh images right now, I have an archive with a wealth of images and stories that I hope might brighten your day just a little.  So I’m continuing my celebration of the Birds-of-Paradise with a focus on the Western Parotia this week.   

Print Giveaway:  Like the past couple weeks, I’m going to have a drawing at the end of this week to give away a print, this time it will be the first Western Parotia image featured below.  If you have received this newsletter, then you are automatically entered.  On Saturday, we will randomly select one of my newsletter subscribers, and the winner will get an email as well as be announced on my Facebook page.   
Western Parotia Ballerina Dance

The Western Parotia is endemic to the mountains in the far western part of the big island of New Guinea.  Parotia’s may not be the most colorful of the birds-of-paradise, with their mostly black plumage, but they make up for that by having the most complex (and in my opinion, most humorous) courtship performance of any of the birds-of-paradise.  

The male Parotia clears and maintains a dancing arena called a “court” somewhere in the forest in a nice level place.  He cleans fallen leaves and debris daily to maintain it.  The strategy for photographing this behavior is to locate an active court and construct a blind nearby.  I spent many exciting days sitting in blinds watching the male Parotia take care of his court, do practice displays, and occasionally, display to one or more females.  I of course photographed all aspects of male behavior, including the initial bow (below) at the start of the ballerina dance sequence, but my primary target was the signature move known as the “ballerina dance”.  The male has a special set of elongated breast feathers that he fans out like a ballerina’s tutu during the display to create this unusual shape.  So of course, on my early trips to the Arfak Mountains to photograph this species, my goal was to capture the bird in peak action, with skirt fanned.   

The image above is my favorite of the ballerina dance, because I feel like it captures a bit of the personality and intensity that this small bird appears to put into his display.  When I first saw a Parotia actually raise his skirt into the ballerina pose, and shake the six wire-like feathers on his head back and forth, it was actually hard to keep from laughing, though I was trying to concentrate on my photography!  I hope the image brings a smile to your face as well. 
         The ballerina dance is preceded by a bow.

Like the story I shard in my previous Wildlife Diaries about the Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise display, I of course also wanted to capture the females who were coming to watch the performance.  Like the Wilson’s, the Parotia females looked down from above to the male performing his display.  I remember wondering what the display looked like to them during my first trip to photograph this bird way back in 2004, but not really having a way to get a camera up above looking down. 
 Females watch a male Western Parotia perform his ballerina dance from a horizontal perch directly above him.

Fast forward to 2016, when Ed Scholes (of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology) and I were approached by Silverback Films to shoot a sequence for their Netflix series “Our Planet”.  We now had a chance to go back to the Arfak Mountains with new tools at our disposal, and try to tell the full story of the display of the Western Parotia, including the female’s perspective.  We made two expeditions of a month each, working on filming Parotia and other species in the area.  If you have some time on your hands, I think you will enjoy checking out the “Our Planet – Jungles” episode on Netflix, where you can see the full sequence of the Western Parotia display behavior that we captured.  Just as a teaser, below is a still from video showing the climactic moment in the ballerina dance when the male pauses in one place, and flashes his breast shield upward to the female.  To our knowledge, our footage captured for this film was the first recording of what the female sees during a Western Parotia display.  As with our documentation of Wilson’s display, it is very exciting to film a behavior in the wild in a way it has never been seen before, and especially one that reveals new biological information.  In fact, as a biologist/photographer, these kinds of opportunities are one of things I find most satisfying about my work.   

This is the top-down image that revealed what the female sees from her perspective.  When the male aims his breast shield upward, the female sees a bright flash of yellow suddenly appear in the middle of the black oval.
(© Tim Laman/Silverback Films).
Tim Laman Fine Art

Behind the Scenes Shots:   

The most important factor for success in a bird-of-paradise filming mission is to find the right male who is active and attracting females.  For the Silverback/Netflix shoot, with the help of local landowner guides, we scouted more than ten courts before choosing one for filming.  The one we chose showed good signs of activity, and was in a beautiful setting that also had space around if for setting up blinds.   

To tell the story of the Parotia male maintaining his court, doing practice displays and performing for females, we wanted to have many different camera angles.  The way we accomplished this was a combination of my shooting with a RED Digital Cinema camera from blinds, which we moved to shoot different angles on different days, combined with remote cameras hidden in different positions around the court.  By moving these hidden cameras around to capture different viewpoints almost every day, we created a wide variety of shots to choose from for the editors to build the sequence.   

Our days usually started at 3 or 3:30 AM when we got up to prep for the day and hike to the location allowing an hour of darkness to get remote cameras set up and get in position before the male would arrive at dawn.  Doing this day after day for weeks can be exhausting, but the end result – filming something that’s never been seen before – is worth it! 
Ed Scholes inspects one of the many Parotia courts scattered throughout the forest.  Ed’s expertise (he did his Ph.D. on Parotia behavior) was key to choosing the best court, and predicting what the male was going to do. 
The palm leaf covered hut beyond the Parotia’s court is one of my blinds, where I stayed well hidden while shooting the Parotia with a RED camera and long lens.  I spent many hours a day in blinds like this for many weeks to build up the shots for the Netflix sequence. 
Inside a dark blind near the display court, Ed Scholes controls three remote cameras from iPads.  These cameras were placed out in the dark, early in the morning before the bird arrived. 

Gallery Update:   

We regularly add new images to my galleries at www.timlamanfineart.com.  Recent additions include hummingbirds from Sunnylands added to the open edition paper prints category, and also a collection of favorite East Africa images from my recent trips.  Please have a look! 

I hope you are enjoying these images and stories, and can also get outside and enjoy the beauty of birds in your own area, wherever you are. 

Stay safe everyone! 

Tim