Regent Bowerbird bower, courtship display and copulation today at D’aguilar NP SEQ, (Mt Mee section).

I was lucky to come upon a Regent Bowerbird bower this morning while in the D’aguilar NP (Mt Mee section). I have hoped to find one for years now and this morning it took some time to register that I’d actually happened upon one. While on the path I heard some scuffling in the understorey and thought it was, most likely, a thrush so was surprised to see a male Regent Bowerbird acting in a strange manner under the shrub. The light conditions and mass of shrubbery made it difficult to get a photograph of the bird but when I realised it seemed to be attending to a bower I was really thrilled. I watched it pick up various objects and it appeared to be waving the objects about and placing them back on the ‘pretty ordinary and insignificant’ bower. It was making some bizarre movements also that confused me. This went on for minutes and so I knew it wasn’t about to fly off if I moved so I did move a little in order to get a better vantage for photography. Imagine my shock when I realised on moving that the bowerbird was actually showing off to a female on the other end of the bower. The female’s posture was close to the ground and still but she managed to convey an excited anticipation by a gentle flutter of her wings while crouched there. My first reaction was that it was an adult feeding a youngster although that just didn’t mesh somehow with the behaviour and then it ‘did the deed’ before my eyes (it was very fast and almost over before I registered it had just happened) and then the penny dropped and I realised what I was witnessing. I managed to get a series of very poor shots as the whole thing took a good 10-15 minutes from start to finish, but, the light conditions were poor and a clear view of the proceedings was made almost impossible by the tangle of shrubbery around the bower. When I got home and researched a little more I realised just how lucky I was: Mating-Behavior and Sexual Competition in the Regent Bowerbird *Sericulus chrysocephalus*. N Lenz *Emu* 94(4) 263 – 272 Published: 1994* Abstract* Male Regent Bowerbirds *Sericulus chrysocephalus* build small, meagrely decorated avenue bowers for courtship displays and copulation. In order to study the social behaviour of males and females at bowers, in particular the patterns of female visits and male interactions, bower activities were monitored for 1516 hours at 33 active bowers in the Sarabah Range, south-eastern Queensland. *Adult males spent only 3.2% of daylight hours in bower attendance.* and in referencing Graeme Chapman’s informative and really superb website I also learned: * ‘Finding bowers is another matter. Unlike the other bowerbirds in Australia, males only maintain their bowers for a short period of two to three weeks during the mating season. They are well hidden under overhanging foliage and the best clue to their whereabouts is to hear the very distinctive buzzing call the males give when at the bower’.* — Marie Tarrant Kobble Creek, Qld