Spectacular Fans of Feathers Define the Vogelkop Superb Bird-of-Paradise Courtship Ritual

The Vogelkop superb bird-of-paradise may look like the Superb Bird-of-Paradise, the hopping black bird with iridescent blue ‘eyes’ and a ‘mouth’ in its outspread wings, but the Vogelkop has recently been named as a separate species. As seen in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology video above, the two species are genetically distinct, their calls sound different, the females look different, and the males have different mating behaviors.