informal, mainly Australian. a person who collects miscellaneous objects.
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If impressed, the female moves into the bower avenue for mating and then leaves to perform the nesting duties on her own, while the male readies himself for courting more prospective females. The female places a loose nest of sticks in a tree or bush, up to 30 m – 35 m above the ground.
Satin Bowerbirds make a variety of calls including mechanical churring and buzzing, harsh grating calls, and loud descending whistles.
Other than typically loud and harsh territorial (cat-like calls in the case of the catbirds) and bower advertisement calls, the vocalization of polygynous bowerbirds includes remarkably impressive vocal avian mimicry, mimicry of other animals, of mechanical sounds, and even of the human conversational voice.
Male bowerbirds build stick structures that serve as the base for courtship and mating. They decorate their bowers with colourful objects and are known to steal decorations from each other. Because satin bowerbirds are blue, they seek blue to show themselves off."
Satin bowerbirds are a protected native species. EPA Manager Regional Operations North Coast Benjamin Lewin said the killing of native birds, whether through intentional or reckless pesticide misuse, was a serious offence.
Bowerbirds are native to Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), with 10 species in PNG and eight in Australia. Two species are common to both countries. Bowerbirds are most commonly found in PNG and northern Australia but extend into central, western and south-eastern Australia.
Male bowerbirds use their intelligence to impress the females, constructing elaborate structures called bowers to attract mates. They are not on master builders, but also accomplished artists. Males of some species decorate their bowers lavishly with flower petals and sparkly manmade objects.
The Regent Bowerbird feeds mainly on fruit. It feeds in the canopy and upper layers of the forest and sometimes gleans or sallies for insects.
Males appear to cultivate plants around the structures they build to attract a mate. Male spotted bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus maculates) build structures, or bowers, from twigs before intricately decorating them with objects to attract a female. Males may discard shrivelled berries outside their bowers.
Satin Bowerbirds are medium-sized birds. The adult male has striking glossy blue-black plumage, a pale bluish white bill and a violet-blue iris. Younger males and females are similar in colour to each other, and are collectively referred to as 'green' birds. The bill is browner in colour.
The satin bowerbird is the longest-lived passerine with anything approaching high-quality banding data: it is estimated that the average lifespan of the species is around eight or nine years, while the record longevity in the wild of twenty-six years is the greatest for any banded passerine.
You can encourage Satin Bowerbirds to build their bowers in your garden by
planting lots of local native shrubs, trees and plants.
Don't be surprised if Satin Bowerbirds:
- Steal your bottle caps and pegs.
- Display odd movements such as prancing and wing fluttering.
- Use their saliva when making a nest.
Magpie. Perhaps one of the best-known examples of a bird that likes shiny things, the magpie has entered into popular folklore as an animal that, given a chance, will attempt to steal a trinket or similar object.
Many birds have exceptional color but their eyes can be colorful too – Andean Cock-of-the-rock. Eye color is even more varied in birds than it is in humans. Eye color in birds can vary from black to brown to red to orange to yellow to blue to green to white and many colors in between.
"They all collect things to put in their bower to impress females and those things to them are prized jewels. "Unfortunately, nowadays with our satin bowerbirds, they like blue things, and there's not much blue in nature, so they collect artificial things and they pose great risk to them."
Bowerbirds are closely related to crows, which display their famous ingenuity through behaviour such as tool making — bending straight wires into hooks to grab food, for example. By putting their bowers together, bowerbirds could also be displaying intelligent behaviour, but the jury is still out on this.
32·5 cm; male 173–290 g, female 170–258 g.
