The satin bowerbird (''Ptilonorhynchus violaceus'') is a

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 ...

endemic to eastern Australia. A rare natural intergeneric hybrid between the satin bowerbird and the

regent bowerbird The regent bowerbird (''Sericulus chrysocephalus'') is a medium-sized, up to 25 cm long, sexually dimorphic bowerbird. The male bird is black with a golden orange-yellow crown, mantle and black-tipped wing feathers. It has yellow bill, black ...

is known as Rawnsley's bowerbird.

Description

Mature males have violet-blue eyes and are uniformly coloured black, however, light diffraction by the surface texture of the feathers results in an almost metallic sheen giving a deep shiny blue appearance. Immature males are coloured and marked the same as females and are often mistaken for them. Females might be mistaken for the

green catbird The green catbird (''Ailuroedus crassirostris'') is a species of bowerbird found in subtropical forests along the east coast of Australia, from southeastern Queensland to southern New South Wales. It is named after its distinctive call which sou ...

or spotted catbird with distinctively green/brown or otherwise entirely brown upper body and lighter under body with a distinct reticulated or scalloped pattern, but with very striking blue eyes.

Distribution

The satin bowerbird is common in rainforest and tall wet

sclerophyll Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that is adapted to long periods of dryness and heat. The plants feature hard leaves, short internodes (the distance between leaves along the stem) and leaf orientation which is parallel or oblique to direct ...

forest in eastern Australia from southern

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

to Victoria. There is also an isolated population in the

Wet Tropics The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site consists of approximately 8,940 km2 of Australian wet tropical forests growing along the north-east Queensland portion of the Great Dividing Range. The Wet Tropics of Queensland meets all ...

of north

Diet

Like all Ptilonorhynchidae, satin bowerbirds are predominantly

frugivorous A frugivore is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance an ...

as adults, though they also eat leaves and a small amount of seeds and insects.Higgins, P.J. and J.M. Peter (editors); ''Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds, Volume 6:

Pardalote Pardalotes or peep-wrens are a family, Pardalotidae, of very small, brightly coloured birds native to Australia, with short tails, strong legs, and stubby blunt beaks. This family is composed of four species in one genus, ''Pardalotus'', and sev ...

s to Shrike-thrushes'' As nestlings, however, they are largely fed on beetles, grasshoppers and cicadas until they can fly.Rowland, Peter; ''Bowerbirds'', pp. 76-78 Satin bowerbirds are not in the least finicky in their food preferences, and have taken extremely readily to the numerous plants introduced since European settlement. Indeed, they are a major dispersal agent for a number of

weed A weed is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, "a plant in the wrong place", or a plant growing where it is not wanted.Harlan, J. R., & deWet, J. M. (1965). Some thoughts about weeds. ''Economic botany'', ''19''(1), 16-24. ...

y plants, such as camphor laurel, the European

olive The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' ...

and various species of

privet A privet is a flowering plant in the genus ''Ligustrum''. The genus contains about 50 species of erect, deciduous or evergreen shrubs, sometimes forming small or medium-sized trees, native to Europe, north Africa, Asia, many introduced and nat ...

. They are also often persecuted by horticulturalists because they frequently raid fruit and vegetable crops. Satin bowerbirds are aggressive when foraging, frequently attempting to displace other birds from fruit trees.

Courtship

Like all bowerbirds, the satin bowerbird shows highly complex

courtship Courtship is the period wherein some couples get to know each other prior to a possible marriage. Courtship traditionally may begin after a betrothal and may conclude with the celebration of marriage. A courtship may be an informal and private ...

behaviour.

Mate choice Mate choice is one of the primary mechanisms under which evolution can occur. It is characterized by a "selective response by animals to particular stimuli" which can be observed as behavior.Bateson, Paul Patrick Gordon. "Mate Choice." Mate Choic ...

in satin bowerbirds has been studied in detail. Males build specialised stick structures, called bowers, which they decorate with blue, yellow, and shiny objects, including berries, flowers, snail shells, and plastic items such as ballpoint pens, drinking straws and clothes pegs. As the males mature they use more blue objects than other colours. It is theorized that the preference for blue objects is due to the colour accentuating the plumage of male satin bowerbirds or that the colour blue is more familiar and the designated colour for this species. Females visit these and choose which male they will allow to mate with them. In addition to building their bowers, males carry out intense behavioural displays called dances to woo their mates, but these can be treated as threat displays by the females. Nestbuilding and incubation are carried out by the females alone. Recent research has shown that female mate choice takes place in three stages: * Visits to the bowers, before nests have been built, while the males are absent * Visits to the bowers, before nests have been built, while the males are present and displaying * Visits to a selection of the bowers, after nests have been built, leading to copulation with (typically) a single male. Experimental manipulations of the ornaments around the bowers have shown that the choices of young females (those in their first or second year of breeding) are mainly influenced by the appearance of the bowers, and hence by the first stage of this process. Older females, which are less affected by the threatening aspect of the males' displays, make their choices more on the basis of the males' dancing displays. It has been hypothesised that as males mature their colour discrimination develops and they are able to select more blue objects for the bower. It is not yet known whether this description would also hold true for other species of bowerbird. Male satin bowerbirds are known to destroy and steal from the bowers of one another. The quality of a male's own bower does not predict how often they will destroy others. However, males who exhibit more aggression by attacking others at feeding sites tend to destroy competitor bowers more frequently.

Nesting and life cycle

Satin bowerbirds nest between October and February. Typically two eggs but occasionally one or three are laid in a shallow nest of twigs on top of which are placed leaves of ''

Eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of Flowering plant, flowering trees, shrubs or Mallee (habit), mallees in the Myrtaceae, myrtle Family (biology), family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the Tribe (biology) ...

'' or ''

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus n ...

''. These leaves turn brown as the eggs are laid, and may serve as camouflage. The eggs are cream but streaked with brown, and are much larger than typical for a bird of its size at around ; they are laid every other day and hatch asynchronously after 21 days of incubation. The young are able to fly three weeks after hatching, but remain dependent on the female for another two months, finally dispersing at the beginning of the southern winter (May or June). Female satin bowerbirds mature at two to three years but males do not reach maturity until seven or eight years when they have moulted completely into their characteristic blue-black adult plumage. The satin bowerbird is the longest-lived passerine with anything approaching high-quality banding data: it is estimated that the average lifespan of the species is around eight or nine years, while the record longevity in the wild of twenty-six years is the greatest for any banded passerine. Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme
Satin Bowerbird
'

Gallery

File:BowerOfSatinBowerbird.jpg, Bower File:Satinbowerbirdfemale.jpg, Female File:Satin bowerbird.jpg, Female File:Ptilonorhynchus violaceus -Victoria, Australia -female-8.jpg, Female File:Satin Bowerbird.jpg, Male File:Male Ptilonorhynchus violaceus at his bower.jpg, A male and his bower File:BBNest.jpg, A range of plastic artifacts in a bower File:DSC 0785r.jpg, Bower

References

External links

*

* ttp://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/satin-bowerbird-ptilonorhynchus-violaceus Satin Bowerbird videos, photos & soundson the Internet Bird Collection
Bowerbirds: Nature, Art & History
by Clifford B. Frith, Dawn W. Frith {{Taxonbar, from=Q585670 satin bowerbird Birds of Queensland Birds of New South Wales Birds of Victoria (Australia) Endemic birds of Australia Articles containing video clips satin bowerbird satin bowerbird