It has a loud shrill cry, to be heard a long way, consisting of "Cah, cah," repeated five or six times in a descending scale, and at the last note it generally flies away.

The males are quite solitary in their habits, although, perhaps, they assemble at pertain times like the true Paradise Birds.

All the specimens shot and opened by my assistant Mr.Allen, who obtained this fine bird during his last voyage to New Guinea, had nothing in their stomachs but a brown sweet liquid, probably the nectar of the flowers on which they had been feeding.

They certainly, however, eat both fruit and insects, for a specimen which I saw alive on board a Dutch steamer ate cockroaches and papaya fruit voraciously.

This bird had the curious habit of resting at noon with the bill pointing vertically upwards.