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On an island in the Southern Ocean, a pair of King Penguins calls.
In Central America, an enormous Ringed Kingfisher calls. While nearby, a Thick-billed Kingbird calls.
There's a King Vulture, a King Eider, 89 species of kingfishers, 11 kingbirds, 3 tiny kinglets鈥攁t least 115 birds across the world with the word "king" in their name. And no queens: 10,000 bird species鈥攁nd not one 鈥渜ueenfisher鈥 or 鈥渜ueenlet.鈥
Elsewhere in nature, there's the queen snake, queen butterfly, queen angelfish, queen moth, queen bees, and queen ants. But perhaps the lack of "queen birds" isn't so mysterious. Nearly all the early explorers and naturalists who named birds were men. And when a bird flashed a colorful crown, male royalty must have come to mind first. Once upon a time, there was a species of bird-of-paradise named Queen Carola鈥檚 Parotia. Carola was the wife of King Albert of Saxony, who also had a bird named for him, the King of Saxony Bird-of-Paradise. Alas, the queen鈥檚 bird had its name trimmed to the more tidy Carola鈥檚 Parotia.
So today the scoresheet reads: king birds one hundred and fifteen, queen birds zero.
See a video of the Carola's Parotia's fantastic mating display at .
Bird sounds are provided by at the , Ithaca, New York. King Penguins [42302] recorded by Theodore A Parker III; Ringed Kingfisher [128045] recorded by Curtis A Marantz; Thick-billed Kingbird [109081] recorded by G A Keller.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Dominic Black
Written by Bob Sundstrom
漏 2015 Tune In to Nature.org February 2015 Narrator: Michael Stein