The flame bowerbird (''Sericulus ardens'') is one of the most brilliantly coloured

bowerbird Bowerbirds () make up the bird family Ptilonorhynchidae. They are renowned for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build a structure and decorate it with sticks and brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a mate. The family ...

s. The male is a medium-sized bird, up to 25 cm long, with flame orange and golden yellow plumage, elongated neck plumes and yellow-tipped black tail. It builds an ''"avenue-type"'' bower with two side walls of sticks. The female is an olive brown bird with yellow or golden around the stomach. The flame bowerbird is distributed in and

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...

to rainforests of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. The male flame bowerbird also has a courtship display along with his bower, twisting his tails and his wings to the side, and then shaking his head quickly. The courtship behaviour of the flame bowerbird was filmed by Japanese photographer Tadashi Shimada in '' Dancers on Fire'', a documentary that aired on the

Smithsonian Channel The Smithsonian Channel is an American pay television channel owned by Paramount Global through its media networks division under MTV Entertainment Group. It offers video content inspired by the Smithsonian Institution's museums, research facili ...

, and has also been documented in ''

Dancing with the Birds ''Dancing with the Birds'' is a 2019 documentary film directed by Huw Cordey and narrated by Stephen Fry. The premise revolves around exotic birds doing mating rituals, such as dancing or creating bowers with the right decorations. ''Dancing with ...

''. However, Shimada filmed other peculiar behaviours, such as a male courting a juvenile male and several juvenile males as well as an adult male appearing to share one bower, only to be destroyed by another juvenile male. The flame bowerbird is evaluated as least concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

References

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet
{{Taxonbar, from=Q12267338 flame bowerbird Birds of New Guinea flame bowerbird