Willaim Ingram's Greater Bird of Paradise - Collingwood's sketch of 1907

His father’s Greater Bird of Paradise was probably the first live specimen brought to England. By 1907 he was already financing bird collectors in different parts of the world to provide skins for Collingwood’s studies at the Natural History Museum – no doubt the live bird came from one of his collectors.. He had long kept cage birds and his wider interest in ornithology increased with that of his son.

On 7 February 1908, Collingwood visited tha Cutler Street warehouses in the Port of London, where skins of birds of paradise were sold for the feather trade. Coillingwood wrote

This afternoon I went to the Cutler Street Warehouses having heard that the forthcoming sale of birds’ skins contained a very rare specimen of a Bird of Paradise which had never been seen before by any of the salesmen. It proved to be Rothschild’s Bird of Paradise Callistrapia splendidum a very rare species, but the skin was hardly worth acquiring on account of imperfect condition, lacking (like so many native trade skins) both feet. It is a perfect revelation to see room after room filled with crates containing almost countless numbers of beautiful birds, among which were 2164 Lesser Birds of Paradise, commonly spoken of as light plumes in contra distinction to dark plumes (the Greater Bird of Paradise), over 80 of which were included in the sale.

Perhaps it was this visit that caused William to worry about the future of the Greater Bird of Paradise, Paradisia apoda,  and to start an active conservation project, perhaps the first ever such project. He was wrong in that this species was, and still is, relatively common, but it led to a fascinating project lasting more than half a century.

In 1908 William sent a collector to the Aru Islands, where he captured 53 live specimens of the Greater Bird of Paradise. Of these, 44 survived the journey to the West Indies and were released on Little Tobago, bought by William specifically for the purpose. This was in September 1909. Worried that the birds were mostly males, he acquired three females from a Belgian aviculturist and released these on the island in 1910 and 1912. First reports of establishment were encouraging, and Collingwood and his father travelled to the West Indies in December 1912 to see for themselves – a trip to be to be described later