Photo of the Day #86: Lesser Bird of Paradise

The family of birds known as the Paradisaeidae contain 13 genera of brilliantly colored birds, but the genus Paradisaea is perhaps the most famous of all. This genus contains the Greater Bird of Paradise (Paradisaea apoda), the species name being attributable to the practice of cutting off the feet of the birds before shipping them back to naturalists in Europe. This lack of feet gave Linnaeus the impression that these birds never touched the ground and actually had no feet whatever, although this idea was later discarded when more complete specimens were observed. Similarly patterned but not quite as large as P. apoda is the Lesser Bird of Paradise (Paradisaea minor, pictured above), this particular individual being a male I photographed at the Bronx Zoo.