Bower birds win from morons

(28 April 2017) Some moron(s) thought it necessary to throw an old tyre on the bower of a satin bower bird at a very public location on the mountain. It ruined the structure. How good to see that the male bower bird was only slightly disturbed: he built a new bower within a few days after the vandalism and reused many of the beautiful blue ornaments. The bower, a U-shaped structure of little twigs, can be seen at the right hand half of the photo.
Hopefully the male bower bird will be much more successful in impressing the opposite sex than the idiot(s) who destroyed this masterwork of nature.

Bowers are not nests. They are built and used (and re-used over and over again) by male bower birds to impress and find female partners. She will lay the eggs in a nest in a tree. Famously, the bower birds collect blue objects as ornaments for the bower. In this case the blue objects surrounding the original bower were re-used: the birds moved them from around the tyre to the new bower two meters away. The plastic straws and blue bottle caps refer clearly to the nearby presence of a cafeteria.
Plot: we, humans, can try to ruin nature, but fauna and flora are more resilient than we are. Rightfully so.

Technique
This was not an easy picture. The old and new bower are just on the other side of a barbed wire fence, very hard to get close to. 18 mm wide angle lens, f/3.5, 1/60 sec (handheld minimum) and no flash. I took several flash pictures, but the surrounding vegetation was highlighted too much, making the main subjects, the bower and the blue ornaments, relatively insignificant. Because of the difficult position, the movable and turnable screen of the camera was very helpful.
For photos of the bower birds please look through the print edition of Green island in the Sky.

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