King Bird-of-Paradise

About the King Bird-of-Paradise

The king bird-of-paradise (Cicinnurus regius) is a passerine bird of the Paradisaeidae (bird-of-paradise) family. It is considered by the IOC checklist to be the only member of the genus Cicinnurus, although the genus Diphyllodes is closely related and is subsumed under Cicinnurus by many other authorities.

The king bird-of-paradise is a common and wide-ranging species, distributed throughout lowland forests of New Guinea and western satellite islands. Some populations range quite high into the hills and lower mountains, and these are poorly known as yet.

The first captive breeding of this species was by Sten Bergman of Sweden in 1958. He was awarded a commemorative medal by the Foreign Bird League to mark this achievement. The king bird-of-paradise was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Paradisaea regius. The type locality is the Aru Islands. It is now the only species placed in the genus Cicinnurus that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek κικιννος/kikinnos meaning "ringlet" or "curled lock... Wikipedia →