WILD BIRD PAGE #2

(Wild Bird Page #1 - The Owl Who Sat Beside Me)
(Wild Bird Page #3 - Getting to Know Our Bird Neighbors)

THE BEST MIMIC?

By Sally Blanchard
Illustration by Sally Blanchard

Is the African Grey Parrot really the best bird mimic ... how about the Yellow-naped Amazon ... or maybe the Mynah Bird?

According to many bird experts, the answer is none of the above.

In fact, the best bird mimic is considered to be the Australian Lyre Bird (Menura novaehollandiae). This almost nondescriped brown bird lives in the forests of south eastern Australia and stays close to the ground rarely flying. He makes his own clearing as a stage for his seduction performance. This is where he displays his superb tail that looks like a lyre as the male spreads and shakes it during his courtship dance. But it is not this spread tail that attracts the most hens; it is the Lyre Birds almost endless repertoire of whistles, calls, and imitations of his habitat. The male has been heard doing the calls of twenty other species within his range ... including those of the black and gang-gang cockatoos. He does such a good impression of a Kookaburra that those birds will return his calls.

In The Lore of the Lyre Bird by Ambrose Pratt (1938), the author writes about a semi-tame Lyre Bird who chatted, sang, whistled, and called for visitors for close to three-quarters of an hour. Then he danced for awhile singing his special dance music. The Lyre Bird does not simply do exact imitations of other bird songs, but he also mimics all of the sounds within his habitat. This includes the human voices he hears, dogs barking, mechanical rock crushers and other construction sounds, and, more recently, the sounds of camera shutters. Evidently some of the noises these romantic birds make are not particularly enjoyable to the human ear.