\u201cGlass, plastic and wire were common choices, but we also found items including a pair of handcuffs, medicine jars at bowers near a hospital, and fluorescent mouth guards from a site near an Australian Rules football ground,\u201d says Caitlin Evans from the University of Exeter, who studied the birds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A male great bowerbird in an urban environment displaying to a female great bowerbird. The female is stood in the avenue of the bower and the male is displaying objects to her, including a piece of green glass, red plastic and pink cloth. Credit Caitlin Evans<\/p>\n
Evans and colleagues compared items collected by bowerbirds in Townsville City and a rural area, both in Queensland. Across 61 bowers, city birds gathered decorations that were larger and more colourful than those of their understated rural rivals. The items were mainly from human sources, and include dark green bottle glass, bright red wire and a crimson hair scrunchie.<\/p>\n
Urban birds also collected more items \u2013 about 90 on average, compared to 20 for rural males. One particularly prolific urban bird gathered more than 300 items at his bower.<\/p>\n
In really remote rural areas, where humans don\u2019t make a mess, male bowerbirds typically collect fruit, seeds, leaves and sticks. In the rural areas that were studied here, the bowerbirds collected a mixture of natural and non-natural items, including green leaves and green glass.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, we think they raid the bins and garage of a farm \u2013 and also the bowers of other male bowerbirds,\u201d says Evans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A male great bowerbird in a rural environment displaying to a female great bowerbird. The male is displaying a large red seed, a common display object in rural environments. Credit: Caitlin Evans<\/p>\n
In a second phase of the study, the team collected ten items from an urban bower and ten items from rural one and presented them to both urban and rural males. Both groups favoured the human-made items.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Laura Kelley, also from the University of Exeter, says \u201cOur study demonstrates that availability of human items \u2013 often glass and plastic \u2013 is affecting the behaviour of bowerbirds.\u201d The consequences of this are currently unknown, but according to Kelley, it\u2019s \u201ca reminder of how human activity is changing the natural world in unanticipated ways.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Urban](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Urban-bower-scaled.jpeg\")
A typical bower built by a male great bowerbird in an urban environment. Credit: Caitlin Evans<\/p>\n
Top image: Great bowerbird. Credit: Caitlin Evans<\/p>\n
More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do an Australian banknote, a fluorescent mouth guard and a pair of handcuffs have in common? No,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-484596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}