This print by Danie Mellor illustrates wren courtship rituals, during which male birds offer flowers matching the colours on their backs to their female counterparts. Here, Mellor shows a male red-backed fairy wren making this gesture: in its beak, the bird holds a flower from the ‘flame tree’ (Brachychiton acerifolius) that grows along eastern Australia, including near the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland, where the artist has ancestral and ongoing connections to Country.

By rendering the scene in greyscale except for the flower and the eggs, the artist highlights how the offering leads to the generation of life. For Mellor, the perpetuation of life embodied by the courtship ritual symbolises the continuation of ideas and culture through stories.