Bird of Paradise, Travel Lounge

Europeans first became aware of birds of paradise in the sixteenth century, after merchants returned from Indonesia with prepared specimens known as ‘trade skins’. The first skins of birds of paradise were brought to Europe in 1522 by the surviving crew members of the only ship to complete Magellan's circumnavigation voyage of the globe.

Lesser Bird of Paradise

The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-utang and the Bird of Paradise (1869):

"When the earliest European voyagers reached the Moluccas in search of cloves and nutmegs, which were then rare and precious spices, they were presented with the dried shins of birds so strange and beautiful as to excite the admiration even of those wealth-seeking rovers. The Malay traders gave them the name of "Manuk dewata," or God's birds; and the Portuguese, finding that they had no feet or wings, and not being able to learn anything authentic about then, called them "Passaros de Col," or Birds of the Sun; while the learned Dutchmen, who wrote in Latin, called them "Avis paradiseus," or Paradise Bird. John van Linschoten gives these names in 1598, and tells us that no one has seen these birds alive, for they live in the air, always turning towards the sun, and never lighting on the earth till they die; for they have neither feet nor wings, as, he adds, may be seen by the birds carried to India, and sometimes to Holland, but being very costly they were then rarely seen in Europe."

For anyone handling birds of paradise skins the rare beauty and sumptuous quality of their plumage cannot go unnoticed. Nor is it hard to imagine why birds of paradise have for millennia been ornaments, commodities and gifts.

King of Saxony Bird of Paradise

The practice of killing birds of paradise for the millinery trade was finally addressed in the 1920s when all birds of paradise species were protected from export out of New Guinea. However even today, birds of paradise still have not lost their appeal. While it is now illegal to hunt or export the birds, their numbers continue to dwindle as their habitat is slowly being destroyed through New Guineas" contemporary exports in gold, copper, timber and coffee.