It frequents the lower trees of the less dense forests: and is very active, flying strongly with a whirring sound, and continually hopping or flying from branch to branch.

It eats hard stone-bearing fruits as large as a gooseberry, and often flutters its wings after the manner of the South American manakins, at which time it elevates and expands the beautiful fans with which its breast is adorned.

The natives of Aru call it "Goby-goby." One day I get under a tree where a number of the Great Paradise birds were assembled, but they were high up in the thickest of the foliage, and flying and jumping about so continually that I could get no good view of them.

At length I shot one, but it was a young specimen, and was entirely of a rich chocolate-brown colour, without either the metallic green throat or yellow plumes of the full-grown bird.

All that I had yet seen resembled this, and the natives told me that it would be about two months before any would be found in full plumage.