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Updated: June 17, 2025
The bower-bird is credited with being responsible for the discovery of a couple of goldfields, the birds having picked up nuggets for their bowers, these, discovered by prospectors, telling that gold was near.
At ten o'clock the next morning arrived the Major, the Doctor, and Halbert; and the first notice they had of it was the Doctor's voice in the passage, evidently in a great state of excitement. "No more the common bower-bird than you, sir; a new species. His eyes are red instead of blue, and the whole plumage is lighter. I will call it after you, my dear Major."
The Spotted Bower-bird, the Chlamydera maculata, which also lives in the interior of Australia, exercises this method of construction with equal success. The bowers built by these birds may be one metre in length; this is on a very luxurious scale, the animal itself only measuring twenty-five centimetres.
I find that I have been using the pronoun 'he' hitherto, whilst describing this insatiable love of finery, but on reflection I cannot but think that I am utterly wrong, and that when more is known of the domestic arrangements of the bower-bird, it will be found that the lady alone is responsible for this meretricious taste, and that the poor 'he', whom I have so unblushingly accused, is in reality gathering berries and fruit for the little ones, guiltless of the slightest inclination towards picking and stealing.
These objects are continually re-arranged, and carried about by the birds whilst at play. The bower of the Spotted bower-bird "is beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that the heads nearly meet, and the decorations are very profuse." Round stones are used to keep the grass-stems in their proper places, and to make divergent paths leading to the bower.
If the bower-bird wishes for wedding chimes to grace his picturesque mating, another bird will be able to gratify the wish the bell-bird which haunts quiet, cool glens, and has a note like a bell, and yet more like the note of one of those strange hallowed gongs you hear from the groves of Eastern temples.
Stickleback, polygamous; male, courtship of the; male, brilliant colouring of, during the breeding season; nidification of the. Sticks used as implements and weapons by monkeys. Sting in bees. Stokes, Captain, on the habits of the great bower-bird. Stoliczka, Dr., on colours in snakes. Stoliczka, on the pre-anal pores of lizards. Stonechat, young of the.
The Satin bower-bird collects gaily- coloured articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of parrakeets, bleached bones and shells, which it sticks between the twigs or arranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould found in one bower a neatly-worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evidently procured from a native encampment.
Another strange Australian bird is called the bower-bird, because when a bower-bird wishes to go courting he builds in the Bush a little pavilion, and adorns it with all the gay, bright objects he can bits of rag or metal, feathers from other birds, coloured stones and flowers. In this he sets himself to dancing until some lady bower-bird is attracted, and they set up housekeeping together.
As to the child, it appears that it sleeps near its mother, until it is of age to lead an independent life. There exists in Australia, the country of zoological singularities, a bird with very curious customs. This is the Satin Bower-bird.
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