These Bowerbirds really have to work it to date. It doesn’t sound all that great for a Bowerbird actually. The “Bower” is a creation equivalent to a teenager’s car… meant to be showy so a female Bowerbird will want to hang out there and be mesmerized by all the objects in front of it. And the male Bowerbirds spend days and days collecting, building, arranging, re-arranging…. just to get their love lair just so.
There are 20 species of Bowerbirds all living in northern Australia and Papa New Guinea. Each has a varying degree of this unique love nest ritual and certain species will prefer certain colors of objects to display… like orange and red flowers and funghi, or the Satin Bowerbird who prefers blues even gathering up human objects like plastic spoons to display.
And yet another quirky thing about the Bowerbird… they arrange the smaller objects in the front of the nest and the bigger objects further away that way when the female hangs out in the Bower… all the objects look the same size. Evidently they are pretty OCD about it and some mad cruel scientist took the objects and arranged them mixing up everything and the Bowerbird spent days arranging them back just so… going into the Bower studying the objects to see if they were right, moving a few, back in the Bower, studying the perspective again. Days I tell you!!
Now listen to the Bowerbirds…
Now look at all these cool images and bird art I gathered just for you. To look at… like a Bowerbird, peering out a Bower, so unimpressed…
The Great Bowerbird, could be great… but it’s just so much work for love, so we’ll just call it good.
ZandMe's 999 Good Things 