a remarkable afternoon

I hope you stay to the end of the movie. Even if you don't like subtitles.

I finally got the camera in the right place and the camera filled the 16gb SD card in about an hour and a half. Please don't say "get a bigger card." It has taken me enough time to inspect and assemble the first 24 minutes of recording!

The camera had been recording 60 seconds and then ten second interval before checking for movement. Now it's set to record for 3 minutes then 10 second interval; more coherence to the story.

I have not enhanced or cropped film in any way this time. Straight as from the camera.

This time no voice-over. The birds, who are entirely in charge of the performance, can be heard without interruption.

This is not a cartoon with fast action. It's a record of life. If your life is too short to watch it all, consider skipping forward to places where I've put subtitle notes and be sure to see the end, aware of the amount of time and patience, imagination, energy and song and dance Odimbar has put into his performance for a whole half hour!

At points there seem to be real expressions of emotion.

You can enlarge by clicking on the square device in the bottom right of the film.

You can use a device in the same corner to get back to the whole page. 

Day 5

This morning a flurry of green birds, Teehoops, came in just after 7 and in response from stage left (as I look upon it), entered Odimbar. His presence fairly quickly saw them off today. There remained Eastern Spinebills, a Black and White Flycatcher, wrens and wattlebirds, but no interaction between these and the bowerbird.

"I'm only barely tolerating you, you at the window."

Then, as I sat and watched and felt a little guilty about a rude movie I'd made yesterday in which I sarcastically suggested he was a thumb-twiddling male, he set to work. He came and went with fine new straws and proceeded to fit them into his bower. I was hurrying to go out. No video.

When I came back near 11, the bird in the photo was in charge of the scene. But despite my wearing nondescript dark colours and arriving quietly at my window, he/she saw me in in an instant and flew to the left and into the big magnolia.

Then, a bit later, to my far left, events in the movie below. Open to interpretation. This is my interpetation: I at first thought he, Odimbar, was trying to drive off a bird, but I shifted to think this is Yuthiwin, the bird also in the still shot above. They are having fun, or one of them at least is having fun. She acts like all this is her territory. Perhaps it has been her territory from before Odimbar became dominant male of the bower. We did not see the beginnings of the bower, I don't know if people get to see that beginning. What is the role of the Yuthiwin in that beginning? Who makes the start, who prepares the dance space? ... Another question: we have assumed that Odimbar is newly adult-fledged, this being a new bower. Or other interpretation possible?

The photo above is a little to the right of centre in window view. The movie is to the extreme left of my window view. In between is the 10 metre high bulky dark mass of the Port Wine Magnolia with its many roosting and nesting birds. The Yuthiwin lives there.