"Imagine creatures so beautiful that people thought they had come down directly from Heaven." "So striking that the first Europeans to see them thought they could only have escaped from the Garden of Eden." "In fact, that Eden was New Guinea, one of the last inhabited islands to be explored by Europeans." "And it remains virtually the only place where you can see these wonderful creatures." "They were birds, but unlike birds that anyone had ever seen before." "They brought the image of beauty almost to the edge of absurdity." "And their displays were even more extraordinary and bizarre than their appearance." "Some of the most complex to be found in the animal kingdom." "They may not have come from the Garden of Eden but they certainly deserved the name that the first European scientists gave them - the birds of paradise." "Yet much of what they do is still unknown." "More than 150 years after the first scientific observations of these creatures, in spite of innumerable expeditions and countless hours of scientific observation, we are still only catching glimpses, tantalising glimpses, of these heavenly creatures." "A new generation of scientists, and film crews, are attempting to put that right." "But these remarkable birds don't give up their secrets easily." "Another expedition is setting off to look for birds of paradise." "This one is being mounted by the New Guinea people themselves." "A new generation of local conservationists is concerned that paradise bird numbers may be falling." "This team is led by Miriam Supuma." "With her is bird expert Paul Igag." "Ah!" "I've got my knickers wet!" "Miriam's love of nature began in a small village school in the mountains." "To follow that passion, she learned English, got herself to university, and finished her ecology fieldwork in Australia." "Over the next three months, she aims to see and document ten birds of paradise species." "She has agreed to let our camera crew go with her." "They are starting with the smallest of the family - the king bird." "Miriam searches for signs." "You have to know what to look for..." "and she does." "You can see peck marks on this fruit here." "BIRD CALLS" "That's his call." "But she just can't see him." "It tends to like this area." "One of the reasons is because of the light coming through." "They're show-off birds so they like to show their plumage and the light complements their bright plumage." "The signs are good." "They decide to build a hide." "It must be big enough to seat her and the camera crew." "But there's a problem." "A dead banana tree blocks the camera's view." "Miriam has it gently pruned back." "BIRDS CALL" "She's confident the birds will return." "This is the mating season when they become less shy." "She discovered this when she was still a student." "Working in the forest, early one morning, she spotted a bird of paradise high in the tree tops." "And below it, another, preening its plumes in the morning sun." "And then they displayed." "The sight changed her life." "On that day, I noticed about six or seven birds of paradise, singing and dancing and it just continued for five or ten minutes." "I stopped what I was doing, I was measuring trees at the time." "I was looking at it - just staring at it in awe." "Naturalists fall in love with nature and then come back for more." "Seven years on and experience has taught Miriam that the best way to observe the male king bird is to find his display perch and then wait for him to arrive." "Teaches you a lot of patience, doesn't it?" "And patience can often pay off." "Oh, there it is." "Wow!" "The king bird." "It's facing that way with its back towards us." "You can see the red back." "It's gone up into the canopy." "He's a deep chilli pepper red, with a snow white breast." "Two long quills sprout from his tail, each tipped by a green disc like a coin." "That was a rare moment." "Oh, there - there it is again." "Wow." "She's thrilled." "With other males calling in the forest nearby," "Miriam is sure that she's found a good population here." "The male king bird will call to the females in the area." "If none come, he will perform without them." "After puffing himself up, he flicks his quills above his head, and waggles them, making the little discs dance in the air above him." "He's still hoping for an audience." "Undeterred, he ends with a flourish." "He swings upside down and locks his legs and then he turns himself into a pendulum." "The king bird is a soloist." "The males of many other species display in groups." "These are the greater birds of paradise." "Males assemble every day in one special tree, waiting for a female to arrive." "When one does, they all snap into action." "And she selects the one she prefers." "She's rewarded with a one-on-one, starting with pecks on the head." "And eventually she accepts him." "While all the males may appear equally gorgeous to our eyes, females apparently detect differences." "What's more, they nearly all mate with the same male." "By selecting the finest plumes in this way, the females have increased the males' beauty, generation after generation, and so brought these magnificent dances into existence." "The spectacular beauty of their birds fascinates the people of New Guinea, as I discovered back in 1957." "I knew that the bird of paradise plumes were important, and I quickly discovered just how important." "The plumes are the equivalent of money and an essential payment in the bargaining that goes on between families when fixing a wedding settlement." "SINGING AND CHANTING" "And when men want to dance." "What I saw 50 years ago is still going on today." "Goroka Town, in the heart of the mountains." "It's festival time and feathers are still essential headwear." "Go with the photograph if you can or..." "It's a key moment in the year for Miriam's research." "Look at these and then look at what's on the headdresses." "The feathers of many different species of bird are used in the headdresses, and the team want to find out how many come from birds of paradise." "These scenes are not very different from those I filmed myself half a century earlier." "RECORDING:" "'There were 500 of these men, 'stamping up and down monotonously and unceasingly." "'And as I watched them I realised 'that here was the reason why no-one had brought us birds of paradise.'" "Miriam wants to see my footage from 1957 so she can compare the numbers and species used by dancers then and now." "RECORDING:" "'Each man was wearing the feathers of 30 or 40 birds." "'At this one dance, 'we saw the plumes of over 20,000 slaughtered birds of paradise.'" "The desire to possess the beauty of the birds is an ancient obsession, still alive in these tribal lands." "The island of New Guinea is huge." "1,000 miles long, lying between Australia and the Equator, it was pushed up from the bottom of the sea way back in geological time." "A few land mammals from Australia managed to get here, including some marsupials such as the strange tree kangaroo." "But there are no indigenous carnivorous mammals here." "With fruit growing all year round, this is indeed a paradise for birds." "Then, some 30,000 years ago, the greatest threat to their existence walked in on two legs." "Today, there are people here whose only aim is to protect the birds." "Paul Igag was brought up on the coast, a fisherman's son." "Paul gave up the fishing life to study biology." "He married a highland girl and stayed up here to pursue his love of forest birds." "BIRDS CALL" "The call of the raggiana bird of paradise." "(You can see a male up there with full adult plumage.)" "He's trying to attract females." "Paul has seen many of the forest's rarest bird species." "He builds platforms in the canopy where he can sit quietly and wait." "Some birds are quite bold and seem undisturbed by his presence." "Others are much more wary, like the magnificent rifle bird of paradise." "Paul has been watching the birds intensively for over 15 years." "His tracking skills are crucial to the project." "Together, Paul and Miriam start to identify the bird populations that may need protection." "Paul is taking Miriam to a remote village southeast of Goroka." "INAUDIBLE" "As I did on my own journey to the interior, they have to cross high mountain ranges blanketed by forest." "Between these walls of rock lie immense valleys like the Wahgi." "Hundreds of tribes have lived on the island for thousands of years, separated by these barriers of water and rock." "800 languages have evolved, some as different from one another as English is to Chinese." "The language of Haia village is spoken only here." "Even today, the only contact between these people and the outside world is the plane that takes away their coffee beans." "It's a warm welcome back for Paul." "He's been coming here for the last few years to help map tribal boundaries." "This forest belongs to the Haia people." "They have always been hunters but now they are helping to record the rich wildlife." "One day, all this may become a protected reserve." "For now, it's hundreds of square miles of untouched mountain forest." "For the villagers, a wildlife reserve could bring work and education." "There's a lot at stake." "The locals' hunting knowledge is invaluable for the project." "Paul and Miriam need to find natural paths and trees in fruit if they are to locate all the threatened species." "The three foot long tail feathers of the male black sicklebill are the reason why his kind is almost extinct locally." "His plumes fetch the highest prices but hunting here has now been banned." "This trip is to find two special birds of paradise that are still unprotected by law." "One of them can sometimes be seen in the very early mornings, busy on the floor of the darkest parts of the forest." "Miriam is looking for the parotia bird of paradise, a bird with a very special dance." "The male parotia is most particular about where he dances, and this could be the place." "Paul is looking for the magnificent bird of paradise, a bird which also displays close to the ground, and is therefore very vulnerable to hunters." ""Well, that's it," I said." ""That's the display court, and we're going to get him there."" "We didn't want to spend a long time there - we want to come back and see the birds, so our presence there might, you know, spoil everything." "Six inches of rain can fall in a single day on Crater Mountain." "During the downpours, the birds of paradise shelter beneath the leaves." "'I was sitting in the hide 'thinking we might not get to see anything because it did rain.'" "(Bloody mosquitoes.)" "'And then I heard a male parotia." "'There were other males calling as well.'" "Black as the blackest night, he seems to absorb all the light around him." "He is Lawes's parotia." "On his head, six strange wire-like plumes, each tipped with a black pennant." "On his chest, a shield of iridescent green and gold." "This is his court, a stage he has carefully cleared so that he can dance unimpeded." "Cleaning away last night's leaf fall is essential housekeeping." "A female arrives." "She is comparatively drab with none of his flashy glamour." "She's touring all the courts in the neighbourhood to choose a mate." "He sets about impressing her." "But one of his rivals has called by uninvited." "He is followed by others." "More females arrive and take up seats for the performance." "SQUAWKING" "Tensions rise but nobody dances." "Suddenly, one of the intruders mates with a female." "Another male does the same." "The court has become a free for all." "It's not what Miriam expected." "(They just went straight into mating without even any dance at all." "(It's like skipping dinner and getting straight into dessert.)" "It would be nice to see them actually dancing." "Sitting in the hide for 3 or 4 hours isn't fun with all the mosquitoes, and you'd like to go away feeling you'd seen the whole performance." "Maybe the birds had been disturbed by human activity elsewhere in the forest." "Miriam will allow a few days to pass before she tries again." "Paul is looking for the magnificent bird of paradise." "He's been searching here for a few days, listening to their calls and quietly watching." "He's seen another bird which makes him think that the magnificent may display in this thicket." "A pheasant pigeon, feeding on the forest floor." "That's a female magnificent." "And another arrives." "They can only be here for one reason." "A flicker of gold and there he is - the magnificent bird of paradise." "The male magnificent has dropped seeds onto his court." "Pigeons and doves come to try to grab them." "He's stripping away moss and leaves, letting shafts of sunlight into his display court." "He wants to look his best." "The stage seems set but there's a distraction - another male." "There's a stand-off between the males, then the females take action." "Surprisingly, they charge this intruder and they succeed in driving him out." "Finally, the court maker has his stage to himself." "And now he's giving the most interested female all his attention." "He begins his performance." "He gently pulses, puffing out his breast feathers." "He creates an emerald green, heart-shaped breast shield to impress her." "He flashes tiny iridescent spots next to his eyes to dazzle her." "But is it working?" "We were thinking, "When is mating taking place?"" "It's an activity that probably goes on for a while until only the birds know when it is the right time." "It's Paul's first sighting of a magnificent bird of paradise and that's after 15 years working in the forest." "Several days later," "Miriam returns to the court of the parotia." "The court maker is at home." "He removes little bits of litter and prepares to perform one of the most complex dance routines in the whole bird world." "But now there's trouble - an intruder, another male." "BIRD SQUAWKS" "But the owner of the court is not put off." "And that is how it's supposed to be." "Seeing the parotia dance gives Miriam an insight into the intimate rituals of her people." "When I was sitting in the hide," "I was thinking back to the people of Papua New Guinea, they have these gatherings where they go into a hut and they sit in a row and alternate male-female, male-female." "They sing and rock their heads back and forth." "It's like picking out someone they fancy." "I can understand why, when they do their traditional dance, they put feathers on." "Probably to them, it represents something that's kind of sacred that they find in the forest, and because of the birds' behaviour, it's a very unique and special bird." "Papuans are steeped in the mysteries of their tribal past." "Nobody knows it all, only that birds and humans have been together for thousands of years." "The desire to possess the beauty of the birds is an ancient obsession." "Everywhere, the paradise birds are hunted and their plumes treasured and stored on the rafters in houses throughout the land." "These precious feathers are kept in bamboo tubes, ready to adorn the bodies of a new generation, to help them begin a new cycle of human life." "DRUMMING AND SINGING" "Miriam and her team are counting feathers." "She wants clues as to which birds are suffering most from hunting." "They question the dancers about where and how they got their feathers." "HE SPEAKS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE" "She's keen to know about one species in particular." "What I have here is the blue bird of paradise." "I've seen it worn by some of the highlanders on the headdress." "'It's a very vulnerable bird and its feathers fetch high prices.'" "It's been hunted heavily in the past." "I haven't seen it display in the wild and if I did, that would be something." "In the meantime, beliefs die hard, but among them, there are some that can actually protect the birds." "There's a fear of angering the spirit world." "And where spirits live, hunters will not go." "Imagine a mountain that is covered in forest." "No-one goes up there." "People believe there is a spirit up there." "People don't touch that mountain, so that forest remains intact." "For us, working in conservation, it works perfectly because it leaves that place unspoiled." "Early one morning, Paul and Miriam begin climbing up to part of the forest where hunters fear to tread to look for two special birds of paradise." "Different species live at different altitudes, depending on the rainfall and the type of fruit trees growing at different levels." "Even today, not a great deal is known about these birds - where they nest, how they raise their young, where the species overlap, even interbreed." "Biologists are still trying to find the answers." "Field work like this brings its own delights." "Ah!" "I got my knickers wet!" "It's a challenge in itself to working - being a researcher and working in a remote area." "Sometimes you get to spend months and months out in the field and you miss your comforts in life." "The trade-off is that you get to listen to birds singing in the morning." "You wake up to that every day." "Miriam is looking for the blue bird of paradise." "In undisturbed forest, she hopes to find populations of birds that will be less wary of humans." "Paul is looking for the superb bird of paradise, whose breast feathers are so sought-after." "It calls in the dense mid-canopy, but it displays on or near the ground and in open spaces." "A large fallen tree and there's a hopeful sign here." "On one side, some of the moss is missing." "Small dancing feet could have rubbed it away." "This could be a good place to watch for the superb." "But the weather is not good." "WIND GUSTS" "In wind and rain, birds, like people, take shelter." "There is nothing to be done except wait for a break in the weather." "It's now getting late in the birds' breeding cycle." "Their displays are becoming less frequent and intense." "It's been six days since the team built the hide beside the fallen tree." "Paul arrives in the rain at five each morning, and leaves in the rain at noon." "And the fallen tree is just remaining a fallen tree." "In a damp thicket, Miriam is keeping vigil for the blue bird." "Day seven and finally a visitor to Paul's log, but it's only a ground dove." "That's the call of the superb." "He's making an advertising call from a high point." "BIRD CALLS" "And it's not far from Paul's hide." "BIRD CALLS" "(It's nearby.)" "After many days of solid rain, the birds are quickly becoming active again." "Miriam's bird, a blue bird, has come to the edge of the thicket and is calling." "(I wonder if that's the same bird or two different birds.)" "Paul's bird is calling non-stop." "BIRD CALLS" "And there he is." "There's that fabulous green and blue breast shield." "He's trying to entice a female down from the canopy." "BIRD CALLS" "But that's not her." "The call seems to irritate him." "And there she is." "He transforms himself." "A black cape appears behind his head." "Then he moves into a trancelike state and he dances." "RHYTHMICAL CLICKING" "Success." "And here is that performance again." "All is not what it seems." "Those spots that look like eyes are in fact feathers reflecting the dawn light." "That clicking noise is not his wings striking the wood, but quills flicking against one another, like the clicking of fingers." "No wonder his breast shield is so treasured by human dancers." "It's day nine." "Miriam is still waiting for the blue bird to appear in the thicket in front of her." "BIRD CALLS" "He calls from nearby trees." "Could the hide be putting him off?" "At last, he comes and takes up his position on his favourite branch in his own special way." "(Wow!" ")" "(It's our lucky day.)" "(I've never seen anything like this - this is crazy.)" "It's a performance of such exquisite beauty, it seems unfair that no female is here to see it." "He is serenading like a love struck Romeo but the balcony above is empty." "One can only sympathise." "Male birds of paradise have played to empty seats for hundreds of thousands of years." "It has been their special evolutionary destiny to spend their lives displaying their beauty." "It's what makes them so extraordinary." "The next morning, the male blue bird returns." "Suddenly, he stops." "Miriam has seen something off camera." "There's a female in the tree above." "(She's here, she's here.)" "And now she's here, his performance changes." "His pulsing gives way to a subtle low buzzing that also throbs." "It's an unearthly sound that he only makes in her presence." "There's nothing like it to be heard anywhere else in the bird world." "BUZZING AND THROBBING" "The vibrating movement and the puffing of the chest to expose the black patch was something intimate." "It only did that when the female was next to him, just looking at it gave you a sense of guilty pleasure looking at them - it was something intimate going on between the two birds." "Moving closer, but without touching him, the female seems to be studying every feather of his vibrating body." "Surely he's done enough... ..but no." "And then all of a sudden she just flew away, and it was like, "Oh, come on!"" "For the male to go through all that, it was excruciating, just to put all the energy into it." "And I think for him it was like, "OK, maybe we'll try another day."" "Yeah." "Yet his effort is the whole point." "Males can but try their best." "The rest is up to the females and it was ever thus." "The plaintive call of the rejected male echoes across the mountains." "These dances have been performed here for millennia, but for how much longer?" "Miriam and her team have made a good start on their project but much more work needs to be done." "We need numbers and in order to do that, we need to do research, we need numbers so that we can see how they are fluctuating with time and different factors - human population growth, hunting, disturbance, forest clearing " "so that we can understand their conservation status better." "Meanwhile, to preserve the feathers that the dancers already have, the team are handing out mothballs." "These can be put inside the bamboo tubes in which the feathers are stored and so save them from decay." "That should reduce the demand for freshly hunted plumes." "If we were to lose one of these birds, or two, it could mean the loss of something that people hold close to their hearts." "Papua New Guineans are now caring for their birds in a new way." "The birds have survived the tribal culture for thousands of years but the world is changing and their forest is changing." "Miriam and Paul are starting a new conservation movement to ensure that generations to come will still be able to delight in these astonishing birds of paradise." "Filming birds of paradise displays has long been the holy grail of wildlife film-makers." "It's one of the most difficult behaviours of all to record." "The first to try was a 30-year-old David Attenborough." "In 1957, he and cameraman Charles Lagus journeyed deep into the highlands, but nobody would tell them where to look for the birds." "The local people thought birds were money." "And if you were looking for birds, they'd think," ""Ah, I know what he's after." ""We're not going to tell him where our birds are."" "They were saving them for the moment when they wanted to kill them and use their plumes in bridal settlements and so on." "Technology was another obstacle." "The trouble with film in the '50's was it was all black and white because television was in black and white." "But even in black and white, it was very insensitive film, so there were areas of the rainforest where you couldn't film." "There was simply not enough light." "Finally, after six weeks, assisted by dozens of porters, they eventually saw a raggiana bird of paradise." "RECORDING:" "'Even in this light, we could see 'his brilliant golden head, his iridescent emerald green bib, 'and the gorgeous red plumes hanging from beneath his wings.'" "I have to say it was a pretty dud film, actually!" "I mean, what we eventually arrived at after six programmes, weekly programmes..." "Will we find the bird of paradise?" "..we ended up with this rather bleary black and white film." "And I was rather embarrassed, really." "I thought people would say, "All that work for that!"" "So we gave it such a hype that people said, "Good heavens - fancy that!"" "But they were pretty dud shots, really!" "There was room for improvement and the leap forward came in 1965 when pioneering film-maker Heinz Sielmann lugged a colour movie camera high into the New Guinea jungle." "He spent nine months trying to film birds of paradise, in the face of enormous technical difficulties." "Heinz Sielmann's achievement was fantastic because he took 35mm gear." "You only have to pick up a 35mm movie camera, which is what they make Hollywood movies with, and you know how big it is." "But also the film stock itself, goes through it at a terrible rate, great cans of this stuff that you have to traipse around." "And the sheer physical work of getting it there." "And he got back with some material, which I think, even to this day, has not been paralleled." "It was 30 years before David Attenborough returned to the challenge - in 1995, with producer Paul Reddish and two cameramen and lighter 16mm film cameras." "They also had one of the first broadcast low-light video cameras." "They headed into the forests for 28 weeks." "So we had Mike Potts and Richard Kirby, two of the best natural history cameramen, and we deployed them like a military operation." "The effort produced a special film with many species never filmed before." "Some could only be shot by the light sensitive video camera, like the impressive black sicklebill." "It was a very early start one morning, in search of a bird that even locals rarely see display." "The local people say that the male does display on a perch near here, but it only does so at first light, just before dawn." "So the only thing to do is to sit down and wait." "(He's there, that dim black shape on the sapling." "(This really is seeing in the dark.)" "(Those things like arms are not his wings, they're those epaulettes.)" "Wilson's bird of paradise was also shot in semi-darkness, but using 16mm film." "In such low light, even the latest film stock failed to capture all the details." "After enhancement in the laboratory, the images appeared bleached out." "And the film was missing a very special bird." "The only one we failed in was the blue bird." "That's why I'm fascinated by this film." "We had it worked out to look at the blue bird and Mike Potts, the cameraman, went up to the place where they were, but there was a murder in the village last week." ""There are going to be revenge killings and you'll be for the chop."" "And there really would have been, too." "So Mike had no alternative but to come back." "That was the one thing they missed and that's why I'm fascinated to see it in this programme." "In 2008, the crew of Natural World headed for New Guinea, determined to film the blue bird." "With them went high definition cameras, first used to film birds of paradise by the Planet Earth team in 2004." "High definition almost doubles the detail recorded, and can shoot in extremely low light." "The court of the Lawes's parotia." "Dawn breaks, reflected in the feathers of his golden breast shield." "You can even count them." "The floor of his court is in near-darkness." "Yet the high definition records sharp details and true colours." "But even high definition can't see through a log that has slipped down and now blocks his head." "With the hide built, the camera position is fixed." "The only thing that can move is the log." "The log is right in the middle of its head." "When they stand up, it completely blocks their heads." "Cameraman Dave Allen makes an adjustment, hoping the bird won't notice or won't mind." "It was another of many hopeful yet unproductive dawns that broke as the crew travelled the island." "Day after day of fruitless waiting with the wrong wildlife." "(No birds, just mosquitoes.)" "The sheer mechanical patience of sitting there hour after hour with nothing happening and nothing turning up." "But if you're in a hide, and particularly if a bird is doing something, you know that any sudden movement is going to scare that bird or risk it." "So a mosquito sits on your nose, you know what's going to happen and you desperately want to do that and you simply can't." "So you let the damn thing sit on your nose and suck your blood without moving." "That's quite tough!" "At the court of the parotia, the male returns, but he's still headless." "Up goes the log again." "And next day - eureka!" "Their luck continued and a few weeks later, they finally filmed that most elusive of birds of paradise - the blue bird." "It's difficult to see how the blue bird could be filmed better." "When I saw that footage for the first time," "I hadn't seen that display in that detail at all." "I just sat in front of my television saying, "Ah, look at that!"" "And I'm still knocked out by that." "I think it's a wonderful sequence." "The other thing about birds of paradise to me is that they are not only undeniably, wonderfully beautiful but they are actually dotty." "I mean, they're kind of bonkers." "It's the profligacy of nature but it's also, let's get it clear, the desires and fascinations of the females that have turned these poor birds, male birds, down this line in order that they have to go through all these hoops," "do all these fantastic things, simply in order to make sure that they get the girl." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"