Bird of paradise creates colourful dance with microscopic mirrors in its feathers

In a small forest clearing in Papua New Guinea, a male six-wired bird of paradise is getting ready for a show-stopping number. He rears up and spreads his wings so that they encircle his body like a ballerina’s skirt. He begins to dance, bobbing from side to side to side while shaking his head and waggling his six bizarre plumed wires. And all the while, his chest feathers flash with an ever-changing palette of orange, yellow, green and blue. Few animal displays so wonderfully merge the sublime and the ridiculous. The flashing chest feathers are an eye-catching part of the bird’s routine. Many birds, from peacocks to starlings, have shiny feathers that change colour but those belonging to the six-wired bird of paradise are special. Thanks to their unique shape, each one acts as a three-way mirror, allowing the bird to produce changes of colour that are far more dramatic than what other birds can manage. Doekele Stavenga discovered the secret of the six- wired bird of paradise (also known as Lawes’ parotia) by studying its feathers under a microscope. At first blush, they have a similar structure to almost all other bird feathers. There’s a central stem or rachis, and smaller filaments called barbsbranch off from that. Even smaller filaments called barbules branch off from the barbs, and it’s the barbules that give the feathers their mesmeric properties.