The Satin Bowerbird is one of the quirkiest birds you’re going to find on the planet! Lets start with its name. Satin is pretty obvious, their plumage color radically changes as light strikes it going from black, black to the most amazing brilliant blue. Now “Bower” might be throwing you and that refers to its crazy love shack that it creates. The male Satin Bowerbird creates this crazy stick, two wall structure and maintains it for nearly nine months of the year. Part of that structure is the “front porch” which is a collection of more sticks along with anything blue it can find. Before man showed up, it would be blue feathers from other birds. But with man came plastic so now you can find any kind of blue plastic you can imagine. Now if you want to drive a bowerbird nuts, place a piece of his blue inside the actual bower structure. He can’t get it our fast enough! Now all of this is for one purpose, to attract the female who he will mate with for only a few seconds and then out she goes as the male tries to attract the next to his bower.
This particular bower isn’t that far from the main lodge at O’Reilly’s. When it was first shared with us, we were told it had just been destroyed by another bowerbird. Later that day when we walked by it, the bower was present again. Indicating it was active, we stood there to photograph it and within a short time, the male was indeed putting the finishing touches on the bower. Over the week, we saw the bower come and go many times, being destroyed most of the time by the Australian Brush Turkey which just went through being a turkey. It never seemed to phase the Satin Bowerbird, it was just like, all part of a day in the life of a bower. The best part was watching all the care the male put into the construction of the bower. He would come in with his stick, carefully place it in the structure then using only his bill, push it into place and into the ground. The whole time, he had an eye on the canopy overhead looking for a female. One time he saw a female and man, did he turn on the charm. As you can see below, he picked up a flower (where it got that from is still a mystery). Now he has no song, sounds more like his loosing his stomach when he calls. He puffs up, does a kind of dance, points to all his blue “stuff” on his porch and hopes a lot. We never saw any mating but we saw him try a lot. It’s a helluva a biological strategy for getting lucky!
Getting the photograph you might think is a challenge but actually with today’s technology, it’s not. The photographic problems are, shooting in a dark forest a dark subject that is constantly moving. Since you’re shooting through the forest limbs, branches and debris, you have to find an avenue through it all to actually see the bower. A long lens with a narrow angle of view is key, I went with the 800mm. With it being dark, you gotta use a higher than normal ISO, I went with 800, to have a shutter speed that would prevent ghosting since you’ve gotta use flash. I turned to the D5 / SB-5000 because iTTL is so important in the exposure. To meld the ambient light (so important in these photos) with the flash (essential in these photos), I dialed in -.07 in the D5 (for the ambient light) and -3.0 for the flash (also dialed via the body). That combination is what is bringing life to this crazy bird who when it comes to love, is as smooth as satin!