The best-dressed Goldie gets the girl.
But while his feathers may have secured him a mate,
they're not strong enough to carry him off the island
and further east across the South Pacific.
Birds of paradise have sacrificed flight efficiency for flights of fancy. Goldie
So who did manage to colonise the South Pacific?
New Guinea's enormous landscape is carved up into thousands of isolated valleys.
Each shelters huge numbers of potential colonisers.
Amazingly, one in 20 of the world's insect species may live here.