Photos

The satin bower bird is a proud, lively, dominant and noisy inhabitant of forest and scrub in Australia.

In a corner of our garden, under shrubs, hidden behind a tall lomandra grass plant (which I have parted for this shot) is the male bower bird's dancing pavilion. Around the pavilion is a collection of blue objects. We live next to a school, store and village post office, so there is no shortage of bottle tops, drinking straws and packaging tapes. Often we find, in places by the house where the bower bird has dropped them, such things as blue rolls of plumbers tape, which he has stolen and dropped on the way home.

It is a hard life for the male bower bird. rising socially to control territory, he gets to build such a bower, and then flighty women come to inspect his work - his collection of blue things, his bower and his dance performance.