Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Male Bowerbirds (are the shizz)


Male bowerbirds use color to personalize their space and, more importantly, to attract the lady birds into it.

When they're feeling frisky, male bowerbirds build intricately woven nests or bowers to house their prospective mate. To attract the female, the male then uses color to decorate:

These objects — usually strikingly blue in hue — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items or pieces of glass. The bird spends hours carefully sorting and arranging his collection, with each object in a specific place; if an object is moved while the bowerbird is away he will put it back in its place.

2 comments:

Lyvvie said...

I'm fascinated that they can see colour. I didn't realise they could. I thought only humans could see colour. Why did I think that?

Nicole said...

awesome!!