W hen a
New hatchling Otto, pictured at just a few days old in November 2024, required hand feeding every two hours to keep him alive
Raggiana bird of paradise
“We don’t want them to know a human is raising them, so we pretend to be its mum”
chick hatched at Port Moresby Nature Park in November – only the second such hatching in four years of trying – the excitement of the birdkeepers who had nursed the egg for 20 days was tempered by a real sense of worry. How were they going to keep this rare little creature alive? And the one who felt that responsibility most deeply was the park’s acting conservation manager Francis Gundu, who has only recently been promoted into the acting role and was determined that the chick would not die on his watch. “Every morning I was the first one who saw him so I would be thinking, ‘Is he going to make it?’ ‘Will he survive or not?’,” Francis told us, laughing about it now, but remembering the sense of dread. “It was three months of worry. It caused me to lose weight!” Francis lives on site at the park so would set the alarm on his phone to ensure he didn’t miss any of the chick’s eight daily feeding times, the last at 8pm and the first at 6am. “I would set the alarm 20 minutes early so I could get over from my house, it’s not very far away – three minutes if I run.” Once in the vet room where the chick was kept in an incubator to keep it at a constant
temperature and humidity, Francis would
prepare its meal – a vitamin-spiked
mash of papaya and baby rats, which are a nutritious protein source for chicks in their early stages of development. He would then hide behind a curtain to feed his hungry little charge. “Our intention is not to domesticate the birds, we don’t want them to know a human is raising
them, so we pretend to be its mum,” Francis explained. “Even when we check his weight or his body condition we put up a curtain so they
can’t see us, and we blow a whistle during feeding to mimic the bird’s call.” For that first 6am feeding, which Francis
A stunning Raggiana bird of paradise in the wild at Varirata National Park, Sogeri Photo: Dr Brina Bunt, Chasing Zebras
VOLUME 42 2025
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