All animal life is wonderful and much of it is beautiful, but it seems
to me there can be nothing prettier or more subtle in all the immense
accumulation of the folk lore of human courtship and marriage than the
following practice of a certain Mexican bird.
He belongs to a rarely beautiful species of the Paradise family.
To shield the privacy of his wooing and wedding he builds a dainty
little cone-shaped hut, about which he contrives a marvelous little
landscape garden.
First he makes a sward of green moss and beds and parterres of crimson
berries, tiny bright flowers and gold and silver sand and grains. Here
and there he puts a pearly pebble or tiny pink shell. And so long as his
love making lasts he drags away and replaces each flower as it fades,
keeping the little Eden tidy, gay and sweet for his tiny love.
This sounds like fiction, but is scientific fact.
Louise Jamison.