Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
elevates and expands the beautiful fans with which its breast is adorned. The natives of Aru
call it 'Goby-goby.'
One day I got under a tree where a number of the Great Paradise birds were assembled,
but they were high up in the thickest of the foliage, and flying and jumping about so con-
tinually that I could get no good view of them. At length I shot one, but it was a young spe-
cimen, and was entirely of a rich chocolate-brown colour, without either the metallic green
throat or yellow plumes of the full-grown bird. All that I had yet seen resembled this, and
the natives told me that it would be about two months before any would be found in full
plumage. I still hoped, therefore, to get some. Their voice is most extraordinary. At early
morn, before the sun has risen, we hear a loud cry of 'Wawk—wawk—wawk,
wŏk—wŏk—wŏk,' which resounds through the forest, changing its direction continually.
This is the Great Bird of Paradise going to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his ex-
ample; lories and parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-hunters croak and bark, and
the various smaller birds chirp and whistle their morning song. As I lie listening to these in-
teresting sounds, I realize my position as the first European who has ever lived for months
together in the Aru islands, a place which I had hoped rather than expected ever to visit. I
think how many besides myself have longed to reach these almost fairy realms, and to see
with their own eyes the many wonderful and beautiful things which I am daily encountering.
But now Ali and Baderoon are up and getting ready their guns and ammunition, and little
Baso has his fire lighted and is boiling my coffee, and I remember that I had a black cocka-
too brought in late last night, which I must skin immediately, and so I jump up and begin my
day's work very happily.
This cockatoo is the first I have seen, and is a great prize. It has a rather small and weak
body, long weak legs, large wings, and an enormously developed head, ornamented with a
magnificent crest, and armed with a sharp-pointed hooked bill of immense size and strength.
The plumage is entirely black, but has all over it the curious powdery white secretion char-
acteristic of cockatoos. The cheeks are bare, and of an intense blood-red colour. Instead of
the harsh scream of the white cockatoos, its voice is a somewhat plaintive whistle. The
tongue is a curious organ, being a slender fleshy cylinder of a deep red colour, terminated by
a horny black plate, furrowed across and somewhat prehensile. The whole tongue has a con-
siderable extensile power. I will here relate something of the habits of this bird, with which I
have since become acquainted. It frequents the lower parts of the forest, and is seen singly,
or at most two or three together. It flies slowly and noiselessly, and may be killed by a com-
paratively slight wound. It eats various fruits and seeds, but seems more particularly at-
tached to the kernel of the kanary-nut, which grows on a lofty forest tree (Canarium com-
