Honorable Mention
Satin bowerbirds
DESCRIPTION
Male Satin bowerbirds (like the bird on the right in this photo) build specialised stick structures, called bowers, and they decorate the area with blue and sometimes yellow objects. These objects are sometimes natural objects such as feathers, flowers, seed-pods and fruits, but in urban settings they are more often artificial items, mostly plastic. Females (like the bird on the left in this photo) visit these bowers and based on their inspections choose which male they will allow to mate with them.At the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia
AUTHOR
I am a recently retired Australian Philosophy Lecturer, now transitioning to working (less formally) as a nature photographer. I take photos mostly of nature in my area, the Illawarra, south of Sydney in Australia. There's an incredible variety of ecosystems in this area – from subtropical rainforests to heaths, for example, from coastal zones to upland swamps – so there is always lots to photograph. Many of these ecosystems are under threat, though, so I hope that my photographs can play a role in their preservation. 