#black sicklebill

[oliveletters]

male black sicklebill mating display

[alonglistofbirds]

[866/10,977] Black Sicklebill - Epimachus fastosus

Order: Passeriformes Suborder: Passeri Superfamily: Corvoidea Family: Paradisaeidae (birds-of-paradise)

Photo credit: Stephan Lorenz via Macaulay Library

[toad-in-a-trenchcoat]

So earlier this week I ended up watching “Dancing With the Birds” on Netflix, and I was like- hey, why not draw ghosts based on Male Birds of Paradise?

First up is the Black Sicklebill, a long, dark, and handsome dude with a built-in hood

Pics of actual birds

[karkod-art]

Was fascinated by this gorgeous birdie and HAD to draw something.

[lowcountry-gothic]

Hummingbirds of the World, by Zoe Keller.

[proton-wobbler]

Battle Royale

Family Reunion (C-3)

Some families are more popular than others, you know? It's a miracle there wasn't a submission for ever single corvid that's ever existed. Instead, we have these guys.

[return-of-a-space-cowboy]

🧚‍♀️ Anon

You can’t help but have a love-hate relationship when you have ADHD because you can have the greatest ideas ever only to start telling yourself “Don’t think about birds, don’t think about birds”

Me: Trying to not think about Harpy!Kars being a Bird of Paradise (Definitely not because the Males have a goofy ass dance to woo a female 🤣😭)

Yep gotta love some birds, as someone who's wearing a black cockatoo shirt rn I get the feeling.

Personally I see Kars being a black sicklebill.

I can imagine him just circling darling and they take it as him readying to attack them as he's staring intensely at them. Really he's doing his mating display and takes them frozen in place as being in awe rather then intimidation.

[dragoncarrion]

black sicklebills are one of the few birds where i legit can't figure out its shape. like what's going on there

[dromeoraptor]

Birds-of-Paradise feel like some speculative evolution project. Once upon a time, a bird found itself on an isolated island continent (most of them live in New Guinea, but some live on Australia, and New Guinea was connected to Australia during glacial periods), and it evolved into a whole family of birds with crazy sexual displays. But not just crazy, but with multiple genera all crazy in different ways. It really does feel like someone wanted to make a spec evo project showing off how sexual selection and display structures can be, but it's real!

This is far from a comprehensive list, but we have:

The one with a trombone windpipe: Curl-Crested Manucode

This is a bird that looks pretty normal, it's from the first branch to split off from the others so it's still monogamous unlike the more extravagant ones. It has a cool sound, but not something you'd expect to need crazy internal workings.

But it does have crazy internal workings, with this super long trachea (windpipe) that bends 4 times before finally getting to the mouth. I'm honestly not sure why it has this windpipe, it's not particularly loud or anything as far as I know.

The "King of the Dance": Western Parotia

Parotias already have complex dances for birds-of-paradise, but the Western Parotia is the one with the most complex of them all. Each Parotia's dance has multiple steps, in a specific order. This one has 6 steps.

Perch Pivot- the male pivots back and forth on a horizontal branch above the display court, a little patch of forest floor that he's cleared out

Head Tilt- the male goes up to a female on the branch and flops his head from side to side.

Court Hop- The male hops across the court, (not one big hop, multiple smaller ones like a sparrow or kangaroo), pauses, and then hops the other way.

Swaying Bounce- The male bounces up and down and side to side as he flutters his wings, moving his head in an infinity sign. He also has a variation on this where it closes its wings and bounces more vigorously

Ballerina Dance- has four parts to it. He does a bow, he walks a bit, he pauses, and then he moves flares those shiny neck feathers while hopping side to side.

The one with wires coming out of its head: the King-of-Saxony

This one has two really weird feathers called "head wires". Twice as long as the bird's body, and he can point them backwards, to the side, or even forwards! They're not just long too, their structure's all weird with the barbs fused into these plasticy tabs.

The one that likes it rough: the Greater Bird-of-Paradise

While showy for a bird, they're nothing too special for a bird of paradise. The main special thing is their big plume of feathers on their back, and their display is basically just running along the branches showing off their plumes and making a racket.

But once he's got the female's attention, he shows the underside of that plume on his back, and then he starts flapping his wings and basically hopping backwards and touching her with his rear end.

Then he starts clapping her with his wings, and kinda pecking at her head. I don't think he open his mouth but he's not exactly being gentle with that beak. And then comes the sex, both seconds of it. Well 2.5 seconds is what I counted in the video, but yeah. Bird sex in general is really short with few exceptions.

The bald one with a Yoshi saddle: Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise

For these birds, the height of male sexiness is a bald head, it seems.

Wrinkly, pale blue bald skin on the head.

Even the females get in on the bald action, it seems.

There's also this thing on his back that he can open and close, this time made of feathers and not bald skin, that I think looks like a Yoshi saddle thing. Also that bib thingy is green, but only at a certain angle.

The one that sings like a cricket: The Black Sicklebill

Crickets sing with their wings, and so does this bird. One of the things he does is rub his wings either against each other or the base of the tail (we're not sure), and it makes this knocking or "distant machine-gun" sound.

The one that sounds like a Machine Gun: The Brown Sickebill

His display is impressive, I showed off his relative's display in the images of the previous part. But the more interesting thing to me is that he sounds like he's imitating some sorta rapid-fire ray gun. I don't know how true this is, but supposedly, during WW2, Japanese soldiers mistook their songs for gunfire.

Credit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's YouTube channel being my main source for this post!

[angrymadsygin]

Hi... In a notice to your mutuals, you apologize for sometimes posting AI stuff. You declare that sometimes you aren't as "vigilant" as you should be and thank them for pointing it out to you and go on to say that you will "delete" it. (AI) Why is posting AI bad? In these times, it is very difficult to determine what is AI and what isn't. If you KNOW, for certain, that something is AI and say so in the comment that goes with the post isn't that OK? If you THINK something might be AI and say so in a comment with the post, isn't that OK? Which brings me to a specific post in your archive... I posted a short video clip of a "Black Sicklebill Bird of Paradise" which you now have in your archive (recent post). I think it's real... (I Googled it and there are videos on YouTube) one person flatly declares it is AI and another says it may be based on a real bird but the video is "clearly" AI. In your opinion, is it AI or not? If you believe it is, how can you tell? I don't want to get into an argument with those guys about it but I could use some clarification. I am 72 years old and sometimes I can tell right away that something isn't "real"; sometimes it takes a lot of "Googling" to make a determination about "real" vs "AI". Any insight you can offer, about this one post specifically, and posting "AI" stuff, in general, would be greatly appreciated. Thank You, Nifty

Hello Nifty! First of all, I'm not a spring flower myself any more 😉 and I don't have any special skills of detecting AI. Second: your "Black Sicklebill Bird of Paradise" video is most probably real. There's more than one video available to prove it. Third: don't get into arguments on the internet. You are, as they say, feeding the trolls. It's just a waste of your precious time in which you can do something pleasant (unless arguing with people is pleasant to you 😅).

The video I reblogged was of an owl carrying her owlets on her back. A mutual pointed out that it was AI and, indeed, it even had an AI watermark in a corner I, sadly, didn't notice. 😔

It is bad to reblog AI because it helps to replace real people's art and work, photography and videos included. AI puts no soul, no heart and makes no real effort to create something and tends to spread misinformation.

I hope I could be of help and excuse my mistakes, I'm not a native English speaker.

Siggy

[pearl-kite]

I have never before in my life wanted to edit a Wikipedia article, but why does the page for that funky bird of paradise sound like that

No, really, I've never seen an article this... subjective?

RUDE

Whoever wrote it keeps comparing it to the brown sicklebill in a way that's almost disparaging of the bird the article is actually about?

The black sicklebill has these feathers too, sure, but they're BETTER on the brown sicklebill. In fact, go listen to that one instead. (????)

And the one that had me stumped for a minute before I finally looked at the units:

I'm guessing the original was written by someone whose first language is something other than English, but that's not really what I'm baffled about. What baffles me is how it hasn't been revised in years to fit Wikipedia's style guide. There've been edits to the layout of the page, images, and captions, but the phrasing has been largely untouched since it was written in 2019.

[lifesteal-headcanons]

the birder is back at it again, completing the list :

Mid: Lyncornis macrotis (great eared nightjar) / alt: Sagittarius serpentarius (secretary bird) Minute: Penelopides panini (visayan hornbill) Pangi: Lybius bidentatus (double-toothed barbet) / alt: Dinopium benghalense (lesser golden-back woodpecker) Rek: Leptotrygon veraguensis (olive-backed quail-dove) / alt: Gallicolumba keayi (negros bleeding-heart pigeon) Terrain: Nothoprocta cinerascens (brushland tinamou)

plus, some additional alternative birds i skipped originally!

Ash: Centrocercus urophasianus (sagehen / greater sage-grouse) Parrot: Cyclopsitta gulielmitertii (blue-fronted fig parrot) / alt-alt: Orthopsittaca manilatus (red-bellied macaw) Branzy: Epimachus fastosus (black sicklebill) Spep: Piranga rubra (summer tanager) / alt-alt: Cardinalis phoeniceus (vermilion cardinal)

.

[alonglistofbirds]

[978/10,977] Black-billed Sicklebill - Drepanornis albertisi

Order: Passeriformes Suborder: Passeri Superfamily: Corvoidea Family: Paradisaeidae (birds-of-paradise)

Photo credit: Anonymous via Macaulay Library

[irl-morros-account]

black sicklebill!!! this is the secong longest bird of paradise :) they also typically are polygamous(have more than one mate)

Whoaa it's freaky looking. But in a cool way, it's feathers are almost iridescent. I could look at that for hours if it wasn't for the uncannily unsettling eyes.

[manwalksintobar]

Self-Portrait as Hummingbird  // Basia Wilson

Mornings ought to start violet with time              enough to stretch my sabrewings,         ��                   sun by sun. When the mornings feel                              flowerless, I try my best. Find sugar

                                          to sate me, minute hermit I am.                             Beauty lately the beam              on which I perch and lean, I sungem my neck: lazuline, berylline, little methods

I employ, minor employees of minute joys.              I velvet my breast—yuzu or juniper,                         depending on the day. I velvet my brows, unknot this blossom                                           crown and bound down-

                                                        stairs for some nectar quick.                                           A cinnamon rim rounding my bowl,                             earl grey starring my throat, I sip               the silt collecting in the mug,    collect my feathers and keys and whiz

into the world, the world              perpetually open for business grim                              and gobsmacking, the world                                              with all its hazardous stars barbing                                                           our throats, which ruby in reply,                                                               by which I mean there is so much blood.

There is so much blood.

                              My gorget like yours is nicked                and split by this. And you, too,  weary mountaineer, must tire

from talk of the summit and long              for a glad plummet, plum-sweet. Look                            how your glitterbeard frays. Tell me:

                                           how will we foot this sicklebill?                              On what should we spend               these heartbeats? Must we scythe through our days? I will tell you

at the end of mine, my ears are black             with listening, pressed as they were all                           day to the dark door, seeking missives to ferry here.

(originally appeared in A Gathering of the Tribes)

[jojou2]

Black Sicklebill طائر

وهو يقوم برقصته الجميلة الغريبة. في كل صباح يكرر هذه العملية حوالي 5 مرات. ولما يفعلها يتحول شكله من طائر إلى شيء آخر تماما

bird Black Sicklebill And he does his strange beautiful dance. Every morning repeat this process about 5 times. When he does it, he transforms from a bird into something else entirely.