97. Another Bower

A few weeks ago I was out walking and heard, from some undergrowth, a peculiar sound – a sliding coo – that I’ve learned is one of the calls of a Satin Bowerbird. I stopped, peered in, and saw, for the first time, a bowerbird constructing a bower.

A bower tends to have a pair of gently curved parallel walls, made from twigs and stems of various kinds. The twigs are placed and adjusted carefully, and, I read, a “mixture of chewed vegetable matter and saliva” is used to paint the bower’s walls. (...