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In the name of sexual selection, male bowerbirds create art.
Bowerbirds, a family of 20 species found in New Guinea and Australia, are named for the elaborate structures they create—“bowers,” often made of sticks or grasses, their main evolutionary or practical purpose seems to be to attract a mate. Females visit multiple bowers before choosing. They meticulously inspect the structures and observe the males’ courtship displays—dancing, calling, and showing off what biologist and filmmaker Sir David Attenborough called their “seduction parlors”—then choose the bower and bird that seem the fittest.
The Vogelkop bowerbird pictured above is native to western New Guinea. With his drab brown feathers, he is no eye-catching bachelor on his own. But what he lacks in plumage he makes up for with his elaborate bower, adorned in red leaves, flower petals, berries, and a pile of dung.
Curated objects may include flowers, berries, feathers, and even shotgun shells.
Bowers vary from bird to bird and species to species. Some are large, spanning up to 9 feet tall, while others are more modest. Different species of bowerbirds seem to prefer different bower components, fastidiously arranging their collections with curated objects that may include flowers, berries, leaves, fungus, feathers, stones, and even human items like bottlecaps, nails, and shotgun shells. Sometimes the birds steal coveted trinkets from other bowers.
Vogelkops have been observed arranging fresh deer dung at the mouth of their yurt-like chambers and later furiously picking away at the mushrooms sprouting from the aging dung—perhaps the mushrooms were not part of their original design vision. Other species dabble in painting, spreading masticated plant material mixed with saliva on the walls of their bowers. Still others have been observed arranging their lawn art in order of size, with the smallest items proceeding to the largest.
While bowerbirds have innate bower-building instincts, it can take years of learning and honing their craft before they begin constructing high-quality bowers like the one pictured above. Some researchers suspect that advances in the art of crafting an immaculate bower get passed along from one generation to the next, another sign that many species can learn from, teach each other, and engage in a suite of aesthetic undertakings. Bowerbirds will alter their designs to mimic the bowers around them, to better attract local females. For example, “Billy the Bowerbird”—a spotted bowerbird who lived among a population of satin bowerbirds for five years—constructed his bower using pine needles and blue flowers like his neighbors, where normally a spotted bowerbird would build with grass and sticks, favoring white, green, and red decorations.
The Vogelkop bowerbird in our photo likely honed his elaborate architecture using a combination of local bower culture and years of trial and error. When a female visits, the male will dance, sing, and strut in front of his bower—sometimes holding a trinket in his beak—to entice her further. Then, should she approve of his handiwork and performance, they will mate, and she’ll fly off alone to a higher, more secluded spot to build a nest for her eggs. The male will remain at the bower, tending and tinkering in the hopes that another female will be equally impressed with his fanciful bachelor pad, choose him as a mate, and pass along his aesthetically inclined genes. 
This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an independent magazine about nature and regeneration powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Tim Laman is a field biologist and wildlife photojournalist specializing in the Asia-Pacific region, with bylines in National Geographic, and more than a dozen scientific articles on birds and rainforest ecology.
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Sarah Milligan
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Sarah Milligan is a Minnesota-based writer and photographer focusing on the intersection of community, conservation, and culture. Her work has appeared in Atlas Obscura, Rewilding Magazine, and others. She holds postgraduate degrees in conservation science from Imperial College London and environment and development from the London School of Economics.
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