Rarest of the rare, and most peculiar as well, the Golden Bowerbird is perhaps the least common of the birds confined to the upland rainforests of north Queensland.
The male, photographed here, builds a “maypole” of sticks over a metre high on the forest floor, with a smaller secondary maypole connected by a horizontal branch (in photo).
He decorates his maypoles with lichen and flowers, and sings and performs from the perch to attract the plain-grey females for mating.
He takes no part in the subsequenty building of a nest, incubation of eggs or feeding of young.
Bowerbirds mainly eat fruit.