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A 200-year-old French painting has reopened a debate about one of the most spectacular yet least studied families of tropical birds -the mystical, ethereal birds of paradise from New Guinea. The painting (left) shows a bird like no known species, yet the artist has an impeccable reputation for accuracy. So is the bird a weird hybrid or an unknown species? And are there dozens of other species of this most flamboyant and enigmatic family out there in the forests of New Guinea, waiting to be named? British painter and amateur natural historian Errol Fuller is taking on the received taxonomic wisdom by claiming there are many more species in paradise than previously supposed.

WHEN the sailing ship Vittoria limped into the Spanish port of Seville in September 1522, those on the dockside recoiled in horror. The ship鈥檚 sails were in tatters, the mast splintered and the crew half-starved. This was all that was left of a fleet of five that had set sail three years earlier under Ferdinand Magellan on the first circumnavigation of the globe. The Vittoria, at least, succeeded in its task. But of the 239 men who set out only 18 returned.

Ships limping home from the east had a particularly horrible reputation in Europe, and Seville鈥檚 townsfolk had good reason to fear this latest ghost ship. The Vittoria鈥檚 crew were in a similar state to the men who returned in a battered Genoese galley 200 years before, bringing the Black Death to Europe. But the Vittoria brought not death, but rich treasures.

There were spices from the gardens and forests of present-day Indonesia. But most exquisite of all was a collection of brightly coloured bird skins with long delicate plumes that had been given to the captain by the Sultan of Batjan, on modern-day Labuha in the Moluccas Islands.

The Sultan had acquired the skins from nearby New Guinea. They were like nothing seen in Europe before. And it wasn鈥檛 just their brilliantly coloured plumage, outsize quills and sharp-edged plates that brought gasps of admiration. Their feet had been removed, and the birds, rather than being stuffed in the European manner, were gutted and fleshless. The Europeans reasoned that, being without feet, they could not have landed on ground or tree, and being without flesh they were ethereal, weightless creatures. They called them birds of paradise.

The birds were rare and revered in their own lands, where the plumes were often used as money. But they remained still rarer in Europe. All attempts to bring live birds to Europe failed. They survived only a few days in captivity. A steady trickle of skins and plumes came west, but no European saw a bird of paradise in the wild until 1824, when the French naturalist Rene Lesson described his first sighting as 鈥渓ike seeing a meteor, cutting through the air, leaving a long trail of light鈥�.

The birds, Lesson discovered, lived high in the forest canopy. The females were rather dowdy; the males anything but. Male birds of paradise devote several months a year to conspicuous and acrobatic displays of their plumage, for which the best are rewarded with queues of mates. Natural selection did the rest to ensure their finery. Rarely captured on film, their reputation as mysterious, exotic and spectacular creatures has survived.

But their heyday was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when thousands of the birds were slaughtered and their plumes shipped west on the new tea clippers, destined to decorate the hats of Victorian ladies. A bizarre trade grew up in Europe among some of the continent鈥檚 richest men to obtain for their collections the most spectacular skins of the rarest birds, many of them unexpected hybrids. Most ended up in the hands of the eccentric Lionel Walter Rothschild, of the banking family, who created a vast natural history museum in his English country home at Tring.

Strangely, only one scientist has ever conducted a considered taxonomy of them. Erwin Stresemann, esteemed ornithologist and director of the Berlin Museum, reviewed the entire family in 1930. He had a lot to go on, with huge numbers of skins cluttering up the museums of Europe. But he concluded that there were just 43 species. A wide range of other specimens that appeared to some eyes to be individual species, were, he reckoned, mere hybrids. In fact, by his count there seemed to be more hybrids than species, but his analysis stood.

The trade in exotic bird plumes gradually died, after a ban imposed in the US in 1913 was followed by similar legislation in Europe. As the trade evaporated, so gradually did interest in the birds. Then along came Errol Fuller, a strange bird in search of strange birds. An upbringing in London鈥檚 East End fostered an enthusiasm for boxing and his main livelihood has been selling dramatic, angular paintings of boxing matches. But he has a sideline producing lavish self-illustrated books on rare and extinct birds, among them the dodo and the great auk.

For 20 years, Fuller has harboured an unfashionable fascination with birds of paradise. He has examined and painted skins and plumes in museums around the world. His artistic interest has become scientific. And he contends that Stresemann got it wrong. Many of the birds of paradise he dismissed as hybrids should have been regarded as fully fledged species, Fuller says. He has examined the evidence in detail. And the handful of fellow experts in exotic birds agree that he may be right.

Why the confusion? Birds of paradise have distinctly raffish sexual tastes. The females may be aesthetically rather particular about the males they mate with, but they are not hidebound by species. 鈥淚nterspecific鈥� breeding is frequent. So hybrids come as no surprise. But Fuller says that Stresemann condemned many brilliant birds to hybrid status simply because he found only one specimen with that plumage and there were no known populations in the wild.

A range of birds originally thought by the Victorian collectors to be individual species, were later summarily rejected by Stresemann. Fuller says they should have their former status restored. So come back Duivenbode鈥檚 riflebird, Rothschild鈥檚 lobe-billed bird of paradise and Bensbach鈥檚 bird of paradise.

Meanwhile, Fuller鈥檚 recent researches suggest there were other birds around that, whether hybrids or true species, never acquired a name. He has found that old paintings of birds of paradise contain almost as many surprises as their skins. The late 18th-century French painter Jacques Barraband produced many exquisite paintings of tropical birds. All those that can be checked are anatomically accurate. What of his birds of paradise?

Some tally with known species. But others do not. Take the one in the illustration. Fellow enthusiast Clifford Frith of the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia, first pointed it out to Fuller. At first sight, it seems to be a 12-wired bird of paradise, a well-accepted species that survived even Stresemann鈥檚 withering gaze. Except that it is not. 鈥淭his one shows an entirely black breast and abdomen, whereas the typical 12-wired is bright yellow,鈥� says Fuller.

Is it a new species, or just a hybrid, perhaps the result of a chance mating between a 12-wired and the black-bellied magnificent riflebird? Another piece of evidence comes from the University of Cambridge鈥檚 zoology museum, where Frith has discovered a mounted skin of a 12-wired bird of paradise with a black abdomen. Is this the same specimen that Barraband painted? If so, it is not quite right, says Frith. 鈥淭he extent of the black underparts is exaggerated in the painting.鈥� But if Barraband saw a different black-bellied bird, then maybe that adds to Fuller鈥檚 case that both may form part of a separate species.

It is intriguing, but does it matter? If the birds don鈥檛 care which species they are mating with, then why should we? But if Fuller鈥檚 views come to be accepted, it will be a rare victory for the romantic, untrained enthusiast, a species of scientist often itself thought extinct.