Thanks Carol. So if SBBs use moss and sticks as paint brushes, does
that make them tool-users? David Attenborough makes much of what he
calls 'tool-makers' in his Life of Birds (TV and book), mentioning two
species only, one of which is the Galapagos woodpecker finch: he says
its use of a cactus spine to prise out grubs has 'brought the bird
world-wide fame'.
Phyl Goddard
-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Probets
Sent: Friday, 26 August 2005 8:42 PM
To:
Subject: pre-European bowers
A few days ago, Phyl Goddard wrote:
>[Satin Bowerbirds]
>also are said to decorate their bowers by 'painting with a mixture of
>saliva and charcoal or saliva and green liverwort', using a stick as a
>paintbrush (Vellenga, 1970). The Vellengas also did a lot of work on
>SBBs according to Rowley. I wonder if that latter claim has ever been
>confirmed?
Yes, it has. Here in the Blue Mountains you can often see the
dark-coloured paste which has been painted onto the inside walls of
the bowers. Once I watched a bird from close quarters painting its
bower using a piece of lichen or moss as a paintbrush - this was at
Leura very near where the Vellengas did their studies.
And on the topic of natural, or pre-European, bower decorations, the
following is from an account of a walk in the northern Blue Mountains
which I posted on Birding-Aus in November 2000:
"Near the end of the day I found a lavishly decorated Satin
Bowerbird's bower, on a ledge between boulders halfway up a steep
hillside. It was far enough from civilisation that the majority of
the decorations were natural. These included a large number of blue
Crimson Rosella feathers, blue Stypandra flowers, yellow wattle
flowers, pale greenish and brown leaves, a number of greenish
cocoons, a large huntsman spider (almost, but not quite, dead and
looking like it had been placed there by the bird) and, to our
surprise, two freshly-picked beautiful yellow flowers of Dendrobium
speciosum - the showiest of all the local orchid species. This of
course led us on a hopeful search for the plants nearby, but we
remained outdone by the orchid-finding skills of a bowerbird."
Cheers
Carol
Carol Probets
Katoomba
Blue Mountains NSW
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