This picture shows the male with a red plastic piece. The birds seem to be particularly interested in shiny and colorful pieces of waste material, who were left in the forest by the local people. This can be a small button, a shiny piece from a candy package, a bottle cap or plastic waste, as long as it looks flashy. These is just one of the side effects of the upcoming civilization in the remoter areas of Papua, but the bowerbirds seem to like it...
The Vogelkop Bowerbird builds one of the most impressive constructions of his genus. Every single bower seems to have his own characteristic decorations: some males seem to be fond of beetle wings and mushrooms, others prefer blue and black berries or decorate their bower with red rhododendron flowers. Some of the bowerbirds have very vivid colours to attract the females, but it seems that the more spectacular the bower gets, the duller the male looks. The Vogelkop Bowerbird is surely one of the duller looking bowerbirds, but who would need a flashy costume to attract the females with such a bower? It takes the males often several years to reach their optimal building capacities. We saw a lot of smaller and collapsed bowers of practising younger males. Apart from their exceptional building capacities, the males are amazing song performers and are able to imitate about every sound they've ever heard in the forest. One of the birds I saw brilliantly imitated the sound of a compact camera when it opens (pling), and once I thought there was a papuan guy coming up the hill when I a heard a dog barking. A little later I realized it was a bowerbird perfectly imitating a barking dog...
Definitely one of the most fascinating birds I've ever seen in the wild!
The bower is a construction used by the male and has no real other function then to attract a willing female to mate. After the mating took place the female will construct on her own a small nest at another place where she will raise her chicks.