About a week ago I finally got to see some of the "lost" bird-of-paradise specimens at the American Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take pictures, but I did make some decisions for myself about whether or not certain forms are hybrids. For example, the specimen of Wilhelmina's Bird of Paradise, which in the book was considered a probable hybrid between the so-called Magnificent and Superb birds of paradise, looked to me very much like a separate species. If it were somehow proven that it was, I think instead of Wilhelmina's it should have a superlative name (taking the example of the Superb and Magnificent), such as the Marvelous, Spectacular or Awesome Bird of Paradise. *
 |
| What would a female Superb, accustomed to this... |
 |
| see in this Magnificent, anyway? |
On a related topic, there is another Renaissance Dutch painting reproduced in the Fuller/Attenborough book that is just as thought-provoking as the scene with the owl that I posted about earlier. This is a painting of the Garden of Eden by Jan Brueghel the Elder. (Unfortunately I cannot find a large enough/high resolution enough photo of it online- look it up.) In addition to Greater Birds of Paradise and plenty of other accurately depicted animals, it contains a penguin that appears to have external knees. At the turn of the 17th century, when this was painted, penguins were very poorly known to Western man; it is understandable that certain details of their appearance would be likewise unclear. However, since no living birds have external knees (except for certain domestic breeds of pigeons), some people, such as Brueghel, could have even been uncertain that penguins were birds at all. Judging from the knees that Brueghel gave his penguin, it is likely he thought its closest relative was the frog.
 |
| Even as late as 1930 some people thought penguins were plants. |
This book sets things straight about penguin knees, by the way.
-Elijah
*I would have put in Wonderful but that name is used for another of the "lost" ones, which, by the way, is almost definitely a hybrid. I can confirm that.
