bowerbird

A very fascinating bird of the bird world; in fact, it is considered the most advanced of all the birds because the male bowerbird builds a structure called ‘bower’ or ‘maypole’ which is a hut-like structure built on the ground with grass plants, small dry branches of near-by trees. {A ‘bower’ is not a “nest”; it is just a decorated place for the male bird to attract the female bird(s) to mate with.  The actual nest is built by the female, after mating, to lay eggs.}  Different species (kinds) build different shapes of bowers.

The most interesting thing is that the male places different small shiny and colourful objects at the entrance of its bower.  Some of the common objects are: shells, fruit, feathers, bones, moss, pebbles, and small thrown-away plastic items and pieces of glass.  Some species (kinds) take the trouble of painting the inner walls of their bowers with the juices of chewed fruit!

Some species (kinds) prefer some particular colour – like the Satin bowerbird which collects mostly the blue colour objects.

In addition, the collection of objects and the decoration styles change from one year to another, just as the fashions in our societies keep changing!

Some species of bowerbirds are very good at mimicking – imitating pig grunts, sounds of waterfalls and even human chatter to make it more fascinating to the females!!

Bowerbirds are also called ‘accidental gardeners’ because when they gather plants and fruits to decorate their bowers at different places, they help those particular plants to propagate.