A garden surprise

Published on by bushboy

Don’t Hold Your Breath’s: Bird of the Week

I went to do a bit of a tidy up in a garden bed yesterday when I found a Satin Bowerbirds bower under the tangled branches of a Honey Gem Grevillea.

It was hard to get a good photo to show the shape. The Satin Bowerbird male places small sticks and grass stalks vertically and makes sure they bend inwards to form a “roof”. At the front, the male will sing and dance to attract a female, bobbing up and down, picking up treasures to show and hopping around.

This is an older photo to show you the shape and form of the bower

In front of the bower he places treasures, mainly blue coloured, collected from far and wide. None of the blue plastic pieces are from my place. The variegated leaves of a Duranta in a garden not far away are a favourite. The brown, perhaps called branchlets, of a Hoop Pine also decorate the dance floor.

I have no idea where this milk bottle top came from but with the nearest houses 300 metres from here imagine carrying that in your beak and flying.

The female Satin Bowerbird

Male Satin Bowerbird. They are so hard to get a good photo as their feathers shine and reflect changing colours from deep blue to dark purple

Quite a few years ago I set up my wildlife camera and caught a Satin Bowerbird destroying anothers bower and stealing that birds treasures

27 thoughts on “A garden surprise”

    1. I am happy you enjoyed a bit of Australian bird life Sue. I was surprised at what I saw when I took the camera off and downloaded the video. That was something I didn’t know happened 🙂

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      1. We have been say for a few years that we should get a wildlife camera or two. It’s too much hassle to go back a few hours on the CCTV. 🙂

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    1. I am lucky they build bowers in my garden. Not too happy about leaving their plastic crap behind when they don’t need the bower any more. I think it may get used as nesting material too 🙂

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  8. “Cheeky” is definitely the word I would have chosen too. 🙂 Interesting nest and in the first photo of the male, I thought that yellow bit was on its head!! That would have been rather amazing.

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  9. The custom of the bower bird makes sense. Build a house, use it to attract a female.
    The custom of the African weaver bird makes less sense. The couple find each other. Then the male builds the nest. The female inspects it and if it is not up to standard, she destroys it. And the male will start from scratch. Until she approves.

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    1. When I first moved here, they came down from the mountains in Winter and went back in Summer. One year they stayed and have been around ever since. I love them around the garden 🙂

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