Hi everyone, today was my birthday and what a great day I had! spotted an eastern spinebill in the garden, then went to the Sherbrooke forest and heard lots of Lyrebirds, amazing repertoire... mimicking many birds including black cockatoos and kookaburras... I wouldn't have believed it was not a kooka or black cockatoo unless I had actually seen the lyrebird demonstrating its talents. not only that but I got to witness a lyrebird going through its mating 'dance' i have never seen a lyrebirds tail diplayed fully like today, awesome, truly an amazing display to witness.and to top it all had a camera backpack and a canon photo printer to boot!
I was in Jamieson on the weekend and was fortunate enough to get quite close to a few lyrebirds.
Here is a video of a male one. The video quality is not the best due to the fact that I used my non-video camera which is quite noisy. At about the 32 second mark this bird starts making some sounds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoviTdxyUCU
Here is a picture of another one:
- soakes
soakes
Olinda, Victoria, Australia
Hi Soakes, great shot. I got a few shots too but when I tried to upload them to Flickr I have exceeded my limit this month so will have to wait to July 1st to upload to this site:( I also captured the vocal repertoire on my mobile phone voice record, from about 4 feet away, boy, they are loud when they are 'going for it' and you can see their whole neck vibrating. I was spellbound. Will check out your youtube video.
Have a look at a David Attenborough youtube clip from his series,(link to it from wikepedia-Lyrebird) the lyrebird imitates a chain saw, camera shutter and car alarm as part of it's repertoire.
I was also wowed by the tail when they are in diplay mode, we were lucky enough to see two doing this , unfortunately I couldn't get a decent shot as there is so much movement happening, but it was a 'moment' just to witness it.
Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best
hey .. great capture on youtube :)
Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best