I still remember back in the late 1970’s being in upland rainforests of the Sea-View ranges in tropical north Queensland, just west of my home town of Ingham and hearing a continuous clapping sound coming from high in the roof of the forest.

Approaching the sound as with any movement through this forest, was a slow process because of the countless tangles of lawyer cane. By the time I finally got to where the sound appeared to be coming from, it stopped. Eons seemed to pass, then it started up again, I was much closer than I thought, for on the edge of a small clearing around fifteen meters up there he was. A male Queen Victoria’s Riflebird in full display on top of a broken off stump, flipping back and forth with his wings held in an arch as he courted a female. I could not believe my eyes, here was some thing that I had only read about, and it was happening right in front of me.

The display went on for some time, but he never actually mated with the female. In the following years I was to see this and film it many times and on most occasions the female would only let him go so far before she would fly off. He used to amuse me as you could almost imagine him swearing in shear frustration as she flew off time and time again, as he appeared to be left wanting more. So much for our human imagination.

One morning I arrived around five thirty am with the camera and was just in the process of climbing up to my hide ( which was only three meters away from his display stump ) when he flew in and landed on the stump almost beginning his display immediately.

In shear frustration after spending hundreds of hours trying to film the complete cycle I envisaged the whole thing happening without getting it on film right in front of my eyes.

I climbed the ladder as quickly and smoothly as I could hoping that because he had seen me so often that he would stay but he didn’t, and they both flew off.

Frustration set in big time, but faith in persistence was about to pay off, I had just put the camera on the tripod, focused on the stump and he appeared on the stump bringing her with him. The tension was so high that words won’t describe what I was saying under my breath. I had been coming here for more than seventy days on and off with only tantalizing bursts of display on film, but this time the female seemed to be behaving differently.

As he began his display of rocking back and forth with ever increasing speed, she began crouching down and quivering her wings, the excitement was electrifying.

I was saying to my self with an out of body experience, don’t stop now, don’t you dare stop now, and they didn’t. The whole thing took about ninety seconds, but it was one of the most powerful short spans of time that I had ever spent behind a camera.

It was to be more than twenty years before I would experience the thrill of filming the complete mating ritual of Australia’s largest bird of paradise on Cape York Peninsula the Magnificent Rifle-Bird.

In December of 2002 a male was seen in display on a horizontal bow of a fallen tree amongst a mass of vines not more than five meters above the ground. From about three pm every day as the shade went across his perch, he would arrive and begin calling at about five minute intervals until almost dark every day for nearly a week.

During the resent days, more than 80 milimeters of rain had fallen and a female was busy building a nest in a low bush no more than 150 meters away. Because he was the closest male to her, I felt sure she would be mating with him on odd occasions as Rifle-Birds mate two or three times a day mostly in the early hours with more than one male during and after nest construction.

Having tried to film Magnificent Rifle-Birds in the past I knew how touchy they may be, so I constructed a hide on the ground around fifteen meters away in the head of a fallen tree, and covered it with army camouflage net. At a distance the hide simply blended in with its surroundings and the only thing that was visible was the tip of the lens pocking through the mesh.

To my surprise within twenty minutes of sitting quietly within the hide, with lots of mosquitoes, the male returned and promptly began calling. All of a sudden he crouched low over his display bow and froze with his gape wide open. Maybe thirty seconds had passed when a female appeared on a vine within five meters of his perch. He immediately began bouncing horizontally from side to side until she finally flew to within touching distance of him, and to my amazement, he raised his wings and began displaying, but so did she, face to face. The only time I had ever seen this was with another juvenile male, but this was no male, it was the female which had been constructing the nest close by, because she had a secondary feather missing and was unmistakable.

This display lasted for about ten minutes, and after filming the whole thing it was just awesome. During the display the blue on the throat was just incredible as he rocked from side to side in unison with her, however it ceased as quick as it began and she flew off with him following her.

As the saying goes if any can go wrong it will and it nearly did. It was getting late in the day and the light was not ideal for filming so I began to pack up, then I was caught out like I was more than twenty years previous with the Queen Victoria’s Rifle-Bird.

I had already moved the camera inside the hide and was in the process of taking the lens off, when I heard the loud russel of the males wings as he alighted on the perch with the female landing right beside him. I knew from passed experiences that they would not handle movement but I had nothing to loose.

They were already going through the motions of getting into full display as I slowly eased the lens back through the mesh and began filming shaking with anticipation. They continued without even a glance and I can only put this down to their total involvement in the moment.

This display was just incredible, from when both birds began face on in full courtship, the action just kept on coming. Both male and female began flipping their wings from side to side slowly building up momentum, until the male seemed to over power her and force her into a submissive pose. As the male began to lean over her, she instantly crouched over the perch and went into a submissive pose and copulation took place immediately.

The amazing thing was that she began preening herself as he backed off still in full display, then he suddenly stopped and completely changed his posture.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect what happened next. He went into what I call the penguin pose, standing erect with wings tightly by his side as he began bouncing vertically and rigidly back towards her. As he approached her for the second time, she again became submissive and copulation took place for the second time in less than three minutes. After this amazing piece of behavior, they both preened along side each other for maybe another two minutes then flew off.

As they left I turned the camera off and just sat there in the dim light in total disbelief. The experience was just numbing, I could not believe what I just saw, and the good thing was I had not stopped the camera through the whole thing.

Its always in the back of your mind that some thing will go wrong, running out of film, batteries going flat or much worse in humid conditions like this, the lens fogging up, then its all over.

Filming and working with wild things is always exciting and some thing that I would find hard to live without.

As my late friend Graham Pizzey who wrote,”The Field Guide To Australian Birds “, once said, and I quote – “ What would the world be without birds, I don’t want to live in a world without birds".

That quote from the master has stuck in my mind ever since, and its some thing that has embedded in my being, and will do so for the rest of my life.