These may not have been the photos he would have chosen for his portfolio, but this male Victoria's riflebird has no one but himself to blame for this selection. When I threw out a rotten banana, he was on it in a flash. His eagerness for overripe fruit gave me an opportunity to take these detailed, if undignified, portraits.
They don't do him justice. His plumage is half velvet, half satin. Basic black with a shimmering blue cap and gorget. There's a flash of iridescence over his tail: sometimes purple, sometimes blue. And pink and green on his flanks. He is a bird of the 70s. He would have looked right at home on Countdown.
