Satin bowerbird
| Satin bowerbird | |
|---|---|
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| Male | |
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| Female | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Ptilonorhynchidae |
| Genus: |
Ptilonorhynchus Kuhl, 1820 |
| Species: | P. violaceus |
| Binomial name | |
|
Ptilonorhynchus violaceus (Vieillot, 1816) |
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The satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) is a bowerbird endemic to eastern Australia.
A rare natural intergeneric hybrid between the satin bowerbird and the regent bowerbird is known as Rawnsley's bowerbird.
Mature males have violet-blue eyes and are uniformly coloured black, however, light diffraction by the surface texture of the feathers results in an almost metallic sheen giving a deep shiny blue appearance. Immature males are coloured and marked the same as females and are often mistaken for them.
Females might be mistaken for the green catbird or spotted catbird with distinctively green/brown or otherwise entirely brown upper body and lighter under body with a distinct reticulated or scalloped pattern, but with very striking blue eyes.
The satin bowerbird is common in rainforest and tall wet sclerophyll forest in eastern Australia from southern Queensland to Victoria. There is also an isolated population in the Wet Tropics of north Queensland.
Like all Ptilonorhynchidae, satin bowerbirds are predominantly frugivorous as adults, though they also eat leaves and a small amount of seeds and insects. As nestlings, however, they are largely fed on beetles, grasshoppers and cicadas until they can fly.
Satin bowerbirds are not in the least finicky in their food preferences, and have taken extremely readily to the numerous plants introduced since European settlement. Indeed, they are a major dispersal agent for a number of weedy plants, such as camphor laurel, the European olive and various species of privet. They are also often persecuted by horticulturalists because they frequently raid fruit and vegetable crops. Satin bowerbirds are aggressive when foraging, frequently attempting to displace other birds from fruit trees.
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Wikipedia