When I was about eight I received, as a generous Christmas present from an aunt, an illustrated book about birds and animals. I must have paged through that book hundreds of times (it is still on my bookshelves), gazing in wonderment at the (black-and-white) photographs of all sorts of exotic species. One bird that fascinated me was the bower bird. The male of the species builds a bower – quite a complicated stick structure – and then decorates it with various objects. As wiki puts it, ‘These objects — usually different among each species — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass.’ I thought about the bower bird as I was on my way to Zaventum airport a few weeks ago. There are roadworks in one of the tunnels leading out of the city. As our car flashed by I just had time to see that the workmen had collected up about thirty fallen hubcaps and had decorated the walls of their hut with them. They were urban bower birds!
Leave a Reply