Golden-Fronted Bower Bird

---

In service to their art, the hat-makers strove to acquire the most exotic and glorious feathers. Across the world, bird specimens would fall from the branches of some distant jungle into the hands of local hunters. They would sell these birds on to local merchants, who sent them off to international traders, who passed them along to the French collectors, who put them into the hands of the hat-makers, who brought them to the hat-sellers who would, finally, place them upon the heads of the Parisian ladies. Ornithologists grabbed onto this chain near its end – they coveted the shipments of feathers that were arriving with such regularity, hoping that they might uncover the newest and most exciting species among them. They had many successes.

In 1895, prominent ornithologist, Lord Rothschild announced the discovery of yet another species. He named it the Golden-fronted bowerbird for the burning-gold crest that swept backwards over the animal’s forehead and down its back. The bird itself was almost the length of a human forearm, reddish-brown in colour with a lighter belly, a thick neck and a short concave beak and was stuffed. Its origin was unknown. It was presumed to hail from the forests of New Guinea (as with all the other fabulous bowerbirds or birds of paradise that had been the fashion in recent years) but Rothschild could not say this with certainty. Somewhere, the chain of hat-sellers and makers, collectors and traders, merchants and hunters had been broken and now the dead bird had no exotic forest to call home.

Professor Jared Diamond enters our story a century later, in 1979. The Indonesian government had given Diamond a month and a thousand dollars to survey Indonesian New Guinea, an area some 450,000 square km in size and containing enormous tracts of wilderness. When the month and the money were through, he was to deliver a plan for a national park project which the government would use to determine which areas would be protected and which would be turned over to the miners and the loggers.

Undaunted, Diamond hired a helicopter and set out to survey the Foja Mountains. A remote range in the northern part of the country, the Fojas contained 15,000 square kilometres of forest that the mountains completely cut off from the outside world. I know this is starting to sound like a story about an extinct bird, and it is.

Wanting to start his exploration as high as possible, Diamond attempted to land in the Fojas at 1,500 metres, but was turned back by marshy terrain. He and his New-Guinean guide settled for landing at 450 metres instead, where the pilot dropped them in a stream. The pilot promised to return in a week’s time and the pair set out, knowing full well that there was no way out of the mountains on foot.

After manging to hike up to 1,400 metres, Diamond began his observations. Perched upon the uninhabited ranged, he would watch the forest as it moved about, heedless of him; brimming with wind, tree kangaroos and birds.

One day, Diamond saw a bowerbird. This was why he had chosen to survey the Fojas, of course: he knew the tale of the lost Golden-fronted bowerbird. And now, here it was. The bird’s reddish body swayed before him, facing the forest. It dipped its head and Diamond caught sight of the sweeping crest: a reddish-orange plume that swelled over its forehead.

Reddish-orange. Not burnt-yellow. Not gold. Not the lost bird. Not the Golden-fronted bowerbird that this story is about. No, it was a more common bowerbird, Diamond thought. A MacGregor’s bowerbird. And if the MacGregor’s made its home in the Fojas, then he reasoned that the Golden-fronted bird must not. And so the story of this extinct bird did not come to an end.

Diamond would return to the Fojas a year and a half later. This time, he was prepared to undertake a complete exploration of the mountains. Along with three New-Guineans, he defied the marshes with a makeshift landing pad and set down at 1,500 metres.

The forest was much as he had left it, for forests without humans can choose not to change at all in just a year. The trees still leaned into each other. The canopy was just as restless with small, fearless animals. The ordinary bowerbirds were still bold and innocent enough to sing and build their bowers at the edge of the human camp.

The bowers themselves were splendid. They stood two or three feet tall, towering over the birds themselves. At the base, they built a thick circle of moss and from this, an explosion of twigs and blue and yellow berries rose up. They resembled unlit bonfires.

Diamond watched, once, as a male fussed with his bower. He hopped around, carrying a blue berry and shaking his head. In time, he found his resolve and placed the fruit at the correct point amidst the intricate twigs. Eventually, a female would come and witness this bower. She would consider the spacing of the fruit; the sculpture of the twigs; the height and width; all the curious and ornate efforts of this bird. And then she would decide if he was worthwhile.

The expedition lasted for two weeks, after which Diamond travelled to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to examine specimens of bowerbirds. Inspecting one of the long-dead, still-lost, Golden-fronted bowerbird, he considered its proud, burnt-yellow-orange crest which swept from the forehead over its rusty body. Of course it would have made an exceptional hat.

Next, Diamond examined the MacGregor’s bird: the one that he had seen so often in the Fojas. Except that it wasn’t. It was of a similar size, certainly, but this bird’s crest was orange-yellow instead of reddish-orange. Besides that, the crest was too short and tidy to belong to the creature he had witnessed in the mountains, and the body was, perhaps, more green than red.

Diamond returned to the body of the Golden-fronted bird. This was it. This was the animal that he had watched dance and fret up in the Fojas. This was the sculptor of the bonfire bower; the artist with the blue berry. The colour and shape of its body and tail; the curve and flick of its crest: this was the bird. Only the colour of that crest was at fault and this he could not reconcile. The faded-orange crest of the bird he held was not that of the bird he had met on the mountain.

With this, Diamond realised his error. It was simply a matter of time. The bird that he held – and the one that Rothschild had received a century before- these animals had died in the forest before being carted from their home to towns to ships to shops to streets on the other side of the world. During this journey, both the bird and its crest must have simply turned pale, with all its famous colour fading away.

Since its half-accidental rediscovery by Diamond, the Golden-fronted bowerbird has continued to enjoy its isolation. Today, somewhere between 1,500 and 7000 of them inhabit the Foja mountains which now sit within the protected Foja National Reserve. Cradled in the mountains, the birds build their bowers and dance and continue not to be bothered by humans. And I know it sounds as if this story about an extinct bird is over, but it isn’t.

---