Birds
Lyrebird
Menura · also called lyrebirds, superb lyrebird
A lyrebird is a chicken-sized brown bird that walks the floor of Australian rainforest raking for worms, and it happens to be the greatest vocal mimic on Earth. A male can run through twenty other birds’ calls so exactly that they answer him, then add a chainsaw, a camera shutter, and a car alarm — all while fanning a shimmering, lyre-shaped tail forward over his head.
Overview
Lyrebirds are the genus Menura, two species — the widespread superb lyrebird and the rarer Albert’s lyrebird — in the moist forests of eastern Australia. They are among the largest perching birds, ground-dwellers that dig worms, grubs, centipedes, and spiders out of the leaf litter with powerful feet, and they sit on an early Australian branch of the songbird family tree.
The mimic
A male superb lyrebird can imitate 20+ bird species in sequence, accurately enough to fool the originals, and wild birds also copy chainsaws, car alarms, camera motors, and construction noise, learning mostly from older males rather than the original sources — so a picked-up sound can persist in a population for generations.
Song, dance, and the tail
A displaying male clears low earth mounds and performs on them all winter, singing his medley while bouncing and shimmering a 70 cm lyre-shaped tail thrown forward into a silver canopy. Females also mimic (more quietly, in defence) and raise the single chick alone. While foraging, one lyrebird turns over 150–200 tonnes of soil a year, which speeds decomposition and measurably reduces bushfire fuel.
Status
The superb lyrebird is Least Concern but slowly declining, and was hit hard by the 2019–20 bushfires. Albert’s lyrebird is Near Threatened, just a few thousand birds in a small band of border rainforest, vulnerable to fire and introduced foxes, cats, and dogs.
Lyrebird: common questions
How does a lyrebird mimic so many sounds?
The lyrebird has an unusually flexible syrinx, the bird voice box, with fewer pairs of muscles than most songbirds but exceptional independent control over them, which lets it reshape its output very precisely and even produce two sounds at once. Combined with an excellent ear and a long life in which to learn, this allows a male to build up a repertoire of imitations, mostly of other forest birds but also of any distinctive repeated sound in its environment. Young males learn their song largely from older males rather than from the original sources, so mimicry of a particular artificial sound, once picked up by one bird, can be passed down through a local population for generations even after the original noise has gone.
Do lyrebirds really imitate chainsaws and camera shutters?
Yes, though the famous examples need context. Wild lyrebirds do incorporate mechanical and human-made sounds they hear repeatedly, and there are verified recordings of wild birds imitating chainsaws, hammering, car engines, and camera motor drives. However, the single most-shared clip, from a David Attenborough documentary, featured a bird named Chook that lived at Adelaide Zoo and had learned the sounds in captivity, so it represents what lyrebirds can do rather than typical wild behaviour. In undisturbed forest, the overwhelming majority of a lyrebird's mimicry is of other birds.
Why does the male lyrebird have such an elaborate tail?
It is a product of sexual selection. Female lyrebirds choose which male to mate with based on the quality of his song-and-dance display, and the tail is central to that display, thrown forward over the body into a shimmering silver-and-bronze canopy that the male vibrates in time with his singing. Males with fuller, more symmetrical tails and more accomplished, varied songs attract more females, and since a male contributes nothing but genes, females gain by picking the most impressive performer. The tail takes about seven years to reach full adult form, so it also signals a male's age and survival ability.
Are lyrebirds endangered?
The superb lyrebird is not, being listed as Least Concern and still fairly widespread in the wet forests of southeastern Australia, although its numbers are slowly falling and the 2019 to 2020 bushfires damaged a significant part of its habitat. Albert's lyrebird is the greater concern, classed as Near Threatened, with a total population of only a few thousand birds confined to a small patch of rainforest on the New South Wales and Queensland border, where it is threatened by fire, the legacy of past logging, and introduced foxes, cats, and dogs. Both species also depend on the deep, moist leaf litter of mature forest, which takes decades to recover after disturbance.