The Birds of Paradise - The Malay Archipelago - page 479

The tongue is very long and extensible, but flat and a little fibrous at the end, exactly like
the true Paradiseas.
In the island of Salwatty, the natives search in the forests till they find the sleeping place
of this bird, which they know by seeing its dung upon the ground. It is generally in a low
bushy tree. At night they climb up the tree, and either shoot the birds with blunt arrows, or
even catch them alive with a cloth. In New Guinea they are caught by placing snares on the
trees frequented by them, in the same way as the Red Paradise Birds are caught in Waigiou,
and which has already been described at page 568 .
The great Epimaque, or Long-tailed Paradise Bird (Epimachus magnus), is another of
these wonderful creatures, only known by the imperfect skins prepared by the natives. In its
dark velvety plumage, glossed with bronze and purple, it resembles the Seleucides alba, but
it bears a magnificent tail more than two feet long, glossed on the upper surface with the
most intense opalescent blue. Its chief ornament, however, consists in the group of broad
plumes which spring from the sides of the breast, and which are dilated at the extremity, and
banded with the most vivid metallic blue and green. The bill is long and curved, and the feet
black, and similar to those of the allied forms. The total length of this fine bird is between
three and four feet.
This splendid bird inhabits the mountains of New Guinea, in the same district with the
Superb and the Six-shafted Paradise Birds, and I was informed is sometimes found in the
ranges near the coast. I was several times assured by different natives that this bird makes its
nest in a hole under ground, or under rocks, always choosing a place with two apertures, so
that it may enter at one and go out at the other. This is very unlike what we should suppose
to be the habits of the bird, but it is not easy to conceive how the story originated if it is not
true; and all travellers know that native accounts of the habits of animals, however strange
they may seem, almost invariably turn out to be correct.