Satin Bowerbird - Ptilonorynchus violaceus

The Satin Bowerbird belongs to a large and varied avian family - the Bowerbirds. Bowerbirds are known for their industrious construction ability, constructing breeding display areas known as 'bowers'. When I say 'breeding display areas', I do not mean areas where they display themselves breeding, that would be probably very illegal and uncomfortably kinky for the >70-year-olds who go looking for these things. And when I say '>70-year-olds who go looking for these things', I do not mean they go looking for mid-root birds. I just mean they go looking for bowerbirds. Explaining this is becoming a weirdly painful process. No, I speak of breeding display areas as the site where the male asserts that he is an eligible mate for a female. Naturally, the best way to achieve that is to design the most desirous stage, and then chase her around in it, dance a bit, and throw plastic everywhere. The good thing about being on the receiving end of pollution (i.e. every species except most humans) is that you have no ethically obliged stance on it - if you want to toss chocolate wrappers at your lover in the middle of a forest, you can do that for days. And chances are she'll even like it. But you have to stop being a human first - so one step at a time please. Not all bowerbirds use plastic as decorative material - any material of whichever colour a given bowerbird species is partial to is quickly utilised. It's a helpful fact for the bowerbirds, because otherwise there would have been a pretty serious mating crisis before the advent of people inventing plastic for the birds to use. The Satin Bowerbird is perhaps the most well documented of Australia's bowerbird species, and its penchant is exclusively for blue trinkets with which to decorate. You will see in the video below, that it not merely the process of collection of these ornaments that consumes this bird, but also their arrangement. As it emerges from the rainforest to tend to its rubbish-littered bower, a bush-turkey, widely considered the Don Draper of the bush (by me and six other people I created on the internet) marauds its way through the bower site. Pay attention to the attention it pays of even the slightest ill-arranged token or bower stick. This is essentially Tommy Wiseau in the form of a bird - black-satin plumage adorning a true auteur - the metaphor holds up well.