FEP Bowerbird Project Flies Into Moorestown Library

MOORESTOWN, NJ — Did you hear the latest tweet? The FEP bowerbird project has wings. On a recent Saturday afternoon, it flew to the Moorestown Library for a special children’s event featuring the bowerbirds of Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent areas—birds that are gaining recognition around the world as artists, architects, and builders.

Friends Enrichment Program (FEP) of Moorestown Meeting Chairperson Monique Begg and handful of FEP volunteers spoke to 20 children and their parents about the bird.

“They were all eager to learn about a bird whose creations are so impressive that when early naturalists sighted them in remote regions, they assumed they were looking at the works of aborigines,” Begg said.

Begg told the audience that, except in one of the 30 known bowerbird species, the male produces masterpieces and does it for the sole purpose of attracting a mate and fathering a new generation of bowerbirds. Courtship is what he devotes his life to.

With twigs, he builds a bower, an exquisite, symmetrical archway leading to the area he has reserved for the stage on which he will sing and dance, do pirouettes and acrobatics—whatever it may take to draw the attention of a female.

For the artwork that decorates his stage, he selects objects he finds in the wild or shamelessly steals from other bowerbirds or from people or perhaps from a nearby dump. The forest floor is his canvas. On twigs and grasses, he deposits a flower here, a tiny toy there, maybe a toothbrush, glittering beads from a broken necklace, whatever catches his eye, even money if he should be lucky enough to come across a dollar or two.

For weeks on end, he arranges and rearranges his treasures. He may even paint his bower with charcoal, berries, or seeds which he crushes with his bill and mixes with saliva. Will he succeed in his quest for a mate? There is no assurance that he will.

The females are choosy. They appraise his work and the works of his competitors. They are not looking for a mate who will help them build a nest and care for the young, since the males don’t get involved with the practical aspects of life.

Indeed, these females are shopping around for the best architect and the best artist out there, the one whose genes they want to pass on to their progeny. Sometimes, twenty to thirty females mate with the same male and the other males never get to mate. At the library, participating children made bowerbird projects, using the kind of objects bowerbirds use to make their own unique masterpieces.

FEP initiated the bowerbird project earlier this year as an enrichment activity and an attempt to broaden participating children’s appreciation of wildlife and their understanding of our collective responsibility as protectors of the environment. The project was so well received that it was later offered to the children’s department of the Moorestown Library.

“It’s wonderful to see how creative the children could be, using all sorts of odds and ends from our craft supplies. The finished projects were all unique and amazing, just like the works of the bowerbirds themselves,” Principal Librarian for Children’s Services Jennifer Dunne said.

One might conclude that there is bower power in the air and that could only be good for Mother Earth and all its denizens.

Photo credit: Anthony Bellano