The Twelve-wired Bird of Paradise is one of the weirdest species within the already strangely diverse family of the Birds of Paradise. The male is boldly patterned with a strong black and yellow contrast. He has a weird prolonged body shape, a narrow long bill and a very short-tail. The bird has very odd display flank feathers, ending in very narrow wires, which grow far beyond the bird's short tail. When observed from a short distance, it looks like the twelve wires are tail feathers.
The bird's display is as well very spectacular to observe and this was for me one of the highlights of my trip in the lowlands. The male starts already calling from the top of a dead vertical snag in the lowland swamps, when it's still very dark. While calling, he flaps his wings from time to time. When a female flies in, the male starts crawling up and down the snag. When I observed the birds, the female first landed on the lowest bracnhes of a vine under the top of the snag. After the male had been displaying for a while along the snag, the female flew to the top of the snag. Then the male first moves around the female and there seems to be some bill-contact between the male and the female. Finally the male also caresses the female's head with his wires and then they fly off, probably to mate at another spot after a successfull courtship.
The pictures show a sequence of the courtship.