Tathra documentary featuring mating satin bowerbirds nominated for international film award

HIs filming of the subsequent mating ritual is now a finalist in an international nature film festival.

"I was walking through the garden and I saw all these blue things and then I saw his bower that he was going to make," said Mr Holden who was a journalist and broadcaster for a number of years.

He set up his camera about a foot away from the bower and just started recording.

"Satin bowerbirds are very shy and elusive and it is pretty rare to find them making a bower, so you have to be very sort of 'David Attenborough'," said Mr Holden.

The footage he captured came in at about 60 hours all up and the final short film took him about another 80 or so hours to edit. It was captured at his previous home near Blackfellows Lake close to Tathra on the Far South Coast of NSW.

He began releasing short chapters on his personal social media page and was eager to release the sequential chapters when his friends were engaged with the content.

Following the chapter releases he put all the footage together into one short film which he uploaded on to a video hosting website. He started the filming in 2018 and was able to complete the film in 2020.

READ ALSO:

"The male is building his bower and a female comes along and she has to be impressed by the bower, that's why he has got to make it as pretty as possible," Mr Holden said.

"The first female comes along and takes a look, and she might think there's not enough blue or it's not impressive enough and she continues on.

"Then a juvenile male pops in to see how it's all done. He is the same colour as the female as bowerbirds don't start breeding until they are 7 years old.

"But he came along when another mature female was there, the juvenile upsets the mature female and male and then they scooted him off.

"Then the mature male starts his dance. If the female goes into the bower she has accepted it as being pretty good.

"Eventually she goes into the bower and then they begin," said Mr Holden.

That is where the short nature documentary ends. Mr Holden explained that he decided he would end the film there to be, "respectful of avian privacy".

Mr Holden said the female was not the only female to enter the bower - "I thought I wouldn't show any promiscuity."

"I don't think it's ever been captured, from my understanding it is among one of the first filming of the satin bowerbird mating."

Someone then reached out to Mr Holden with news that they had nominated his short film for an international award. His video was then selected as a finalist at the International Nature Festival which is based in Austria.

READ ALSO: Bushfire devastation captured in wildlife documentary, wins Cannes film award

The film festival will take place in Innsbruck from October 19-22, 2021.

"I'm very excited to have been nominated," said Mr Holden, "but I've had my time in the limelight as a professional broadcaster. It would be great to see the bowerbird and Tathra to get some recognition though."

On whether he recognised anything in the bower he said, "there were objects from around the home in the nest like milk bottle tops and plastic tarpaulins.

"I even remember when my wife said, 'oh that's where all the blue pegs went!'"

He intends to create the next chapter of the short film in the coming year when the chicks will be born. He just needs to track down a bowerbird female's nest.

The full video can be accessed here.