Tim Laman

| Wildlife Photojournalist

Wildlife Diaries

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dancing bird

Spring Greetings from the Tim Laman Studio!

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Dear Friends,

I have an exciting announcement.  One of the major filming projects I worked on recently will be released Friday April 5, 2019 on Netflix!  Called “Our Planet” it is an epic eight-part natural history series, including a “Jungles” episode featuring a sequence I worked on with Bird-of-Paradise Project colleague Ed Scholes.  We were approached by Silverback Films, the company producing the series for Netflix, about ideas for Bird-of-Paradise behaviors that had not been filmed before.  We pitched the idea of trying to capture the display of the Western Parotia from the point of view of the female.  I’m happy to say we were able to deliver, and in fact, our filming produced a reveal that was even more dramatic than we had imagined…. see below. We are especially excited to be a part of this film because it carries a very strong conservation message, and we believe that the Birds-of-Paradise can be great ambassadors for the protection of New Guinea’s rain forests.

Parotia’s are Birds-of-Paradise that display on a court on the ground, and are typically filmed from a ground level viewpoint, like in the top photo.  This gives a wonderful view of the male’s dance, but is not what the female sees.  She always watches from the perch above the male, and what she sees is clearly what is important in terms of the evolution of this remarkable display that occurred through female choice.  Over the course of more than a month of filming, we positioned remote cameras in many different positions around the court, including straight above.  Eventually, we managed to capture the view looking down over the female’s shoulder at the male.  At the climax of his performance, he plunges his neck in a way that flashes his bright breast shield up toward the female, producing the striking view you see in the image below.
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