What do you get when you combine a bird with an architect? Bowerbirds, the family of birds that build bowers: special nests to impress females! Local females regularly visit neighborhood bowers to compare design choices and choose a husband based on which displays are most impressive. From blue object collectors to stage builders, let’s take a look at 5 species of bowerbirds and the amazing bowers they build!
Satin bowerbirds are obsessed with blue
Perhaps the most notorious bowerbirds, satin bowerbirds often venture near urban areas in search of things in their favorite color: blue! Blue bottle caps, food wrappers, straws, and hair ties are strewn around their bower, along with natural materials like blue berries, flowers, and feathers. Males are so eager to blue-ify their bowers that they sometimes steal from each other! Scientists think the satin bowerbirds prefer blue objects because they reflect ultraviolet light, which birds can see especially well. Mesmerizing!
Golden bowerbirds take generations to build their bowers
One of the smaller bowerbirds, golden bowerbirds construct a low platform of sticks between two tall stick towers built around trees. The structure is decorated with grey-green moss and white berries and flowers for extra flair. This bower so complicated to build that it takes multiple generations of males to complete! When one male dies or is pushed out, another inherits the bower and continues building it. The oldest bowers on record are up to 40 years old with towers that are over 6 feet tall!
Vogelkop bowerbirds build hippie-style huts
The twig huts that vogelkop bowerbirds build range from tiny enough to be the bird’s dollhouse to large enough for the birds to live in! But every bower hut has a door - it’s the style that counts. Outside the stick abode, the male gathers small multicolored items like flowers and displays them in piles. Unlike the random way some other bowerbird species arrange their bowers’ decorations, vogelkop bowerbirds sort their flowers by color! Who could say no to having a permanent rainbow outside their hut?
Tooth-billed bowerbirds have “teeth” to chew leaves
These unusual members of the bowerbird family are called tooth-billed bowerbirds for a reason - they have tiny notches on their bill tips they use to cut leaves! Males construct their bowers differently than most bowerbird species. They carefully place the largest, greenest leaves they can find on a bare patch of the forest floor to create a “stage”-style bower! Males like to sing loudly while sitting at the edge of their stages, singing either their own song or mimicking another bird’s song. It’s like a constant serenade!
Great bowerbirds are masters of optical illusions
Great bowerbirds enjoy a multicolored look - grey, white, red, purple, and green objects can all be found in their bowers! In the center of the scattering is an “avenue” of upright, reddish sticks that makes a tunnel for interested females to sit in. Being surrounded by the red sticks induces “chromatic adaption” in the female’s eyes, causing her to perceive red, green, and purple - the colors of the objects the male collects - more strongly. Once the female is settled, the male then pops his head in and out of the hole, surprising the female by waving colored objects across her field of view! The grey and white objects on the ground are ordered from smallest (near the female’s seat) to largest (at the outer edges of the bower) to create an optical illusion that makes the male appear larger when he’s displaying. What a show!
They might be small, but bowerbirds still find ways to make something beautiful for the people - er, birds - they care about. Let’s follow their lead and do something nice to brighten someone’s day today! 👓