Hi nature lovers
I thought that you would be interested in the
outcome of the "Relocating Bowerbirds Bowers" posting which I put up last
week. Stage 1: Re-siting of the bower has taken place. Here is an extract from
my web log "Words, Birds n Bulldust", which describes the whole
affair.
If you'd like to see pictures, I will
be posting some on the net shortly.
"March 30, 2005
Last week, I was contacted
by a local high school to help them resolve a Bowerbird problem. St Mary's
College was building an extension to an office which would necessitate the
destruction of the bower of the local Great Bowerbird. The students were a
little unhappy about the loss of their bowerbird's "love shack", so their
teacher contacted me. This was a new problem for me: Would the bird leave the
area if the bower was destroyed?; Would the bird lose its standing in its
local community as the "Alpha Male" if it lost its bower? or . . . Would
our bowerbird repair or rebuild elsewhere if we located a good site and moved
his bower?!?
I put an inquiry up on the internet list "Birding-Aus" and
sure enough there was an expert in Queensland who assured me that a bower had
been moved once before and the bird took up residence quite happily. However,
the placement must be correct.
Today I visited the school and gave a
talk on bowerbirds generally and also gave a presentation on "Survival of the
sexiest". In science, the students have been learning about Natural Selection
with an emphasis on "survival of the fittest", so I wanted to present another
important facet of evolution which has shaped the living world around us and
that is Sexual Selection. We live in a world where, if a male wishes to
dominate - in order to spread his genes through procreation - he must be able
to out-muscle his rivals and be the most attractive to females. Those
which aren't attractive to females will be "selected out" as they simply wont
find a partner. One other thing, young female birds particularly like to see a
bit of novelty which, of course, drives change. Hence, we have ancient
relatives of crows which build elaborate structures out of sticks for females
to stand in or near and observe a dance routine by the male, decorate
them with items to show off to the females, practice dance and mimicry all
their lives and develop complex social structures to ensure that the "sexiest"
does all of the bower building and dancing - and copulating. In at least one
of these species subordinate males are actually hormonally suppressed by
dominant males. We have bowerbirds.
After our talk, we surveyed the
grounds of the school to find a site which would suit their bowerbird. Its
requirements are 1. a bush which hangs down fairly low, providing shade,
shelter and privacy, 2. a tall tree nearby where the bowerbird can watch over
his domain, for itinerant females and males which may attempt to steal those
females away and 3. enough clear area about for our bird to see if any
predators are stalking him whilst on the ground.
Eventually, we located a very promising site, so we proceeded to the
site of the bower with a rather large, flat board in hand. Acting as though
I'd done this 100 times before, I cleared the area in front of the bower and
slid the board straight under all of the display artefacts at the front, the
bower in the middle and the display artefacts at the rear. I was quite shocked
that I was able to pull this off without disturbing even one twig, but my
reputation as the Ace Ventura of bowerbirds was on the line. I then had the
students take a corner and side each and then carry the whole kit and kaboodle
to the new site. We'd already cleared the ground for the placement of the
bower and so we just popped the whole thing on the ground and covered the
edges with plenty of mulch. In time, the board will rot away and our bower
might well continue to serve its purpose for years to come.
The bower would only be a couple of seasons old by the look of it and our
friend may well reject it, but it was worth a shot as the bower would have
been otherwise destroyed. I then admitted to the class that this was probably
the second time in history that such a thing had been attempted and that they
should make careful notes of what has happened. The kids seemed interested and
happy about the whole affair, as was their science teacher and we now have the
basis for a fantastic science project.
I will be following events here with great interest. Will he reject the
site and rebuild elsewhere? If so, will he use his old bower materials to
build a new one? Will he tidy up his new bower and continue business as usual?
There could be so many interesting outcomes. We'll have to stay
tuned.
You may like to know that our whole routine was watched very carefully by
the school's local Frill-neck Lizard. The kids were pretty blase about having
such a wonderful creature sharing their playground but I found myself wishing
that I had grown up in such a place as they are indeed quite common around
here. What fascinating reptiles these are, but more on them another
day."
I will keep all birding-ausers up to date with all developments, of
course.
All the best
Ricki
Broome WA
