What animals are great interior decorators?

If you walk through a forest in Australia or New Guinea, you might stumble across a remarkable sight: a tiny home, built of sticks and thatch, and filled with piles of carefully arranged, bright treasures. It’s not the home of an elf or a magical creature, it’s actually the home of a very special bird!

Bowerbirds are the interior decorators of the natural world. When a male bowerbird decides it’s time to take a mate, he builds an elaborate home, or bower. Some bowerbirds build a hut-shaped bower, and others build one that’s more like a long tunnel. Then the real work begins.

To attract a female bowerbird and make her choose him over all the others, a male bowerbird spends days picking just the right things to decorate his bower. He gathers things that are bright or shiny that will catch the female’s eye, and arranges them in tiny piles all around the bower. These can be things like flowers, shells, berries, beetle wings, coins, plastic bottles, or pieces of glass.

Many males in the same area build their bowers at the same time, and a female will visit many bowers before deciding which one she likes best. The males often bob or perform dances to convince a female to come to their bowers, but in the end, it’s what he’s put in his bower that wins her over. Competition is fierce between the males, and they often resort to stealing things from other males’ bowers!