Of all the magic the color green has wrought on mankind, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bird, whose survival depends on blue.
In a small yard in the forest, a man weaves twigs and branches on an artistic board, decorating only with blue things – feathers with a blue tail, blue flowers and berries, bones and shells stained by the sun and the sea to appear snow-white, and, in the last century, were our various blue plastic souvenirs. wrappers, blue threads. These he arranges on the lawn in front, where he performs his happy courtship dance every time a female comes into the basement to look at him as a mate.
Unlike the octopus, which can see shades of blue that we can't bear, bowerbirds have been found to have no advantage in seeing this particular color – they just seem to like it. It may have something to do with how impressive it makes the man's work: Although we live in the Pale Blue Dot — the effect of the atmosphere that bends sunlight to make the ocean blue — blue is the rarest color in the living world. People have fought wars with indigo and traded wealth with lapis lazuli. Perhaps the bowerbird realizes that there is no more precious color than the color blue, so there is no more attractive – a very decorative lure and requires a lot of work because the mating rate is very high: most bowerbirds are monogamous, they produce very few eggs of a large size compared to the bird, sometimes just one, and the males play a major role in raising the chicks.
When taxidermist-turned-zoologist John Gould first introduced bowerbirds in the 1840s in his landmark book on Australian birds – bestseller thanks to 600 fully illustrated plates by his gifted and tragic wife Elizabeth – the purpose of the piercing was still a mystery. Watching both sexes “running and circling the arrow in a playful and playful manner,” he concluded that, contrary to what early Western observers had thought, these elaborate structures were “certainly not used as a nest,” but he could not see their purpose. Some ecologists have even gone as far as to speculate that they are “playgrounds” built by birds just for fun.
But during the fourth century, as theories of sexual selection shed new light on the living world, Darwin – who considered bowers “the finest examples of bird architecture ever discovered” – was able to conclude that they were a theater for bowerbirds “to perform their amorous antics,” built for “the sole purpose of courtship.”
In his landmark 1871 book Human Descent, and Sexual SelectionDarwin cites an interesting bystander's account of what actually happened in this theater:
Sometimes the male will chase the female all over the flight, and go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large leaf, utter some kind of note, set all his feathers straight, run round the bow and be so excited that his eyes seem ready to start in his head; he continues to open the first wing and then the other, speaking softly, whistling, and, like a domestic cock, seems to be picking up something from the ground, until the female approaches him gently.
After some time, we know that the bowers are part of the bird extended phenotype – a term coined by Richard Dawkins in 1982 to describe the genetically determined characteristics of an organism that go beyond its body and behavior, affecting the environment and the ecosystem and its environment. A beaver dam, which changes the flow of rivers and the lives of countless other animals, is part of the beaver's extended phenotype. The city is part of us, like language. (From the expanded phenotype came the idea of an expanded mind.)
Of the twenty known species of bowerbirds, all native to Australia and New Guinea, none is more impressive than the Satin Bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) of eastern and southeastern Australia. The male – himself a living work of art with satin-like deep indigo feathers, dark blue wing feathers, bright yellow beak, and purple eyes – forms what is known as avenue bower: a short tunnel of branches open at both ends, leading to a blue balcony.
But what makes these dating cathedrals so amazing is the essence of their design concept: women's consent and freedom of choice.
When the female enters the bower from behind, the male begins his hopeful dance, spreads out his wings and body feathers, occasionally picks up something blue, holds it up to the female, and taps his head as if to say, Isn't this great? Aren't I caught up in knowing beauty? If he's impressed enough, he stays down and crouches down on the meeting floor, asking her to come around and mount him. If he finds her lacking, he simply walks out, and continues to search for a mate with the most beautiful blue. After all this struggle, the rejected man is left to confirm Rebecca Solnit's interpretation of blue as “the color of loneliness and desire.”
Donika Kelly shows the plight of the bowerbird of bitter beauty in the poem – that extended phenotype of the human species – in her excellent collection. A bestiary (public library):
THE CHURCH
by Donika KellyThink of the bowerbird and its fascination
blue, then island light, acacia,
lower animals. Here, the metallic smell of blood,
marrow, fields of grass and bones.And there, the bowerbird.
Watch as he prepares his lawn, laying all the areas
slightly blue, turning leaf. Then,
how do you find a woman,
lack. All that blue is nothing.
Complete with Maggie Nelson's wonderful ode to the blue, and revisit the wonder of hummingbirds that walk between science and magic.
