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suddenly a male hit this perch and then
a female came down
i’m turning on everything seems to be
working i’m thinking like i was in focus
don’t run at me don’t run at me
immediately the male
starts running up and down straight
towards me and his eyes just disappear
its head disappeared i was like
what just happened i don’t know if i got
that at all i’ve not got a clue
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my name is paul stewart i’m a wildlife
cameraman
and also a natural history producer at
the bbc this shoot
was actually one of my first big shoots
it was for planet earth one
and birds of paradise always a kind of a
holy grail subject for wildlife
cameramen these
are famously difficult birds they’re
relentlessly
hunted they’re nervous they’re in the
crow family they’re incredibly clever
and yeah they were definitely going to
be a challenge and i could already tell
at that time planet earth was going to
be a really big series so
it was it was big and a little bit
worrying papua guinea is
it’s a very very large island virtually
an island continent it’s been
cut off from australia and indonesia for
a very long time
birds of paradise have these incredible
displays they’re incredible because the
birds are stunningly beautiful
they’re incredible because the birds are
amazingly complex in their in their
behavior and their
thought processes
we filmed several different birds of
paradise over two trips one of four
weeks and then another of four weeks i
think we got about
five or six in the end in advance of any
day’s filming we’ll have found a site
that looks promising
you go there sort of midday you say this
seems to be
a perch where they’ve been with the help
of the local people typically the people
that own the land you build a hide and
you’ll maybe leave it a little bit of
time you know after that sort of
disturbance and then comes the big day
where you’re gonna check your hide you
get up
very early in the morning sort of well
before light maybe three a.m
four a.m you travel which could be a bit
of driving
it will almost definitely be a lot of
walking through the forest with your
camera kit
and the people that will help you you
get into the hide
set up your camera it’s all got to be
before first light
the birds mustn’t be there when you set
up or you’ll disturb them
for 10 or more hours every day so
400 hours staring out of the hide window
but cautiously
and the very alarming thing happens
which is that you just realize i’ve got
nothing left to think about
i don’t want to think about anything
anymore nothing is
going on but you must be ready for it to
kick off really fast
this forest is so rich that nourishing
food can be gathered very quickly
that leaves the male six-plumed bird of
paradise with time to concentrate on
other matters
like tidying up his display area
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the law’s parotia this is the bird where
the male
produces a display ground a beautifully
cleaned
manicured little lawn the leaf falls
down he’s furious with that leaf he’ll
grab it he’ll throw it out you
genuinely get a feeling of like disgust
when something messes up his display
court and it’s normally mounting some
sort of war against the sapling that it
wants out of there that it’s trying to
destroy
so i’ll try to destroy that over a
period of a few days and he practices he
practices relentlessly
when there’s not a female the one i love
is where he goes up on sort of tippy toe
the feathers sort of go into this sort
of ballerina sort of bustle all around
him
and then it has this iridescent bib at
the front of its throat
which it flicks up and down to provide
basically flashes of kakala
very impressive but no one is watching
and it is magical because he realized
there’s so much work
gone into this he wasn’t born able to do
this he’s practiced he’s tried
to the point where other males will come
in and have a look and go you know this
is pretty good some adults will come in
and go wow he’s got some moves you know
i should
i should remember that and you know i’m
being anthropomorphic but not too
anthropology they really do
remember what’s impressive what seems to
be in vogue for a successful male
there’s a perch that the female has to
land on and seeing the male i think
there’s a shot of it
turning up he had a little piece of i
think it might have been old underpants
if i had to be honest like
a tiny bit of cloth and he was polishing
her perch and i don’t think it’s even
been seen before
you know that level but that’s what
takes up a lot of the male’s time
every now and again you’ll hear more
noise more squawking
and a female will hit the display ground
and then normally
not long after the male will hit and
that’s when your kind of heart
comes up into your mouth you turn on you
hope your batteries are good
that everything’s going to run and you
just get get ready and
sort of at that moment your fate is
completely intertwined
with this little bird who doesn’t even
know you’re there but you are
rooting for the little guy so yeah
that’s um yeah that those are the were
the highlights of the day
probably the most memorable of the first
views was a bird called the superb bird
of paradise
i knew what it looked like i’d seen
pictures in the books i wasn’t 100
certain what would happen for the
display as a
camera operator you’ve always got this
thing like just keep the eyes in focus
and pray that the thing doesn’t come
backwards and forwards towards you
because there’s not much light you don’t
have much depth of field that’s going to
throw it out of focus
and i waited a day a couple of days
three days i thought it’s not coming
and then suddenly a male hit this perch
it was a log facing away from me
and then a female came down i’m turning
on everything seems to be working i’m
thinking like
he’s in focus don’t run at me don’t run
at me and immediately
the male starts to do this amazing click
click click
running up and down straight towards me
and away from me
and then it does that amazing
transformation they do which was a huge
surprise to me i wasn’t
really expecting it and its eyes just
disappeared its head disappeared i was
like
what just happened i don’t know if i got
that at all i’ve not got a clue
we were able to play play back this was
video and it seemed
it seemed okay but i wasn’t sure if i’d
got it quite right i could see a couple
of slips of focus
that was a little bit stressful but in
the end it turned into a sequence of
people like
because actually it’s not about the
camera operator what they do it’s about
the bird and what it does and it’s an
amazing little transformation it
performs
the beauty of this group is driven by
the choosiness of the
of the females they’re not looking for
the for the strongest male
or one that’s best able to get food
though this will be a part of why that
male is looking good and healthy
what they’re looking for is the most
attractive male the male
seems to have taken it to the furthest
because they want the sort of mail that
gets lots of
the female matings so it means that in a
large population of males there might be
only a few of these
very successful males out there and
you or i couldn’t go out there and say
yeah that looks like a good male that
doesn’t look like a good male
that’s a very very fine choice that only
the female can make
in the case of that the super the superb
that i filmed
he never got a mating when we were there
and i always felt
that that was a big problem for that
sequence but actually rather nicely they
turn that
into the charm of that sequence that uh
you can do your best and
it’s not good enough if something’s not
right
the feather’s not quite right the moves
weren’t quite good they’ll go and
the male can only just try and try again
basically
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she retires to consider her verdict
it’s hard not to feel deflated when even
your best
isn’t good enough
i came out of the hide i had one
tape cassette of footage upon which was
about
seven minutes of footage now that might
sound like a lot but for a camera
operator
to do a month of filming and have about
seven minutes of footage
if i’m honest i came out the hide i
thought my career
is over this is it i have failed i
was nearly in tears on the last day i
was that convinced
that this was a career-ending
blunder um and then i saw the sequence
and i thought
you know what actually they’ve used all
of it so that’s enough those are only
the minutes we wanted
um and then there was a really when it
went out there was a really positive
response
i think people felt connected to it for
the same reason i felt connected to it
was
the little bird was just so invested in
this one thing it just wanted to find a
mate
it was trying so hard
and the females were
impeccable there was no way to know what
was going wrong
there’s not even a letter or a
conversation afterwards
it’s sort of like they’re just out of
there and you can just tell the males
it’s very
hard for them to process one minute it’s
like this is the best moment of my life
this is going great
next minute where’s she gone
but what does he have to do to really
impress her
i think anyone can equate to that sort
of task be it
dating courtship or just general life
than anything when you try very hard and
it just
doesn’t go so well and you pick yourself
up and you go
you know what tomorrow’s another day
i’ll give it another go
maybe maybe i’ll get lucky
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you
