This bird was one of my 'most wanted species' to see in West papua. The male King of Saxony Bird of Paradise is one of the weirdest congeners of it's genus. Its is one of the smaller members of the family, but it shows one of the most fantastic characteristics: it wears two extremely elongated head feathers, more than twice the size of their body. The feathers have a weird and hard structure, and the birds are able to lift these feathers up when dispalying. As these feathers are quite a weight for such a small creature, they have developped strenghtened muscles on their head. You could compare this with a human, who has to be able to lift up with it's head-muscles four meter long poles.
Females and young males are frequently heard or seen along Yabogima, but adult males are quite rare. One of the reasons is that the local people use their head feathers for their costumes, which are worn on ceremonies. Local people told me about some small foraging trees, where I could have the chance to observe an adult male. After spending several hours at these trees without success, we went on for regular birding along the trail. I was very glad, when quite unexpected an adult male flew in right in front of me and started to feed on a burgeon of a small tree. Luckily I had still my camera and tripod ready, as I had just made some pictures of birds in a flock passing by. After about fifteen seonds the bird flew off and I never saw an adult male again.