They are well known for the beauty of the male bird's huge tail when it is fanned out in courtship display and their ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment.
They are among Australia's best-known native birds.
The superb lyrebird is found in areas of rain forest in Victoria, New South Wales, and south-east Queensland. They are apparently in our area but have never seen one.
Albert's lyrebird is found only in a small area of Southern Queensland rain forest.
They are shy and difficult to approach so not a lot information is known about their behaviour.
We know they feed on the ground and as individuals taking a range of invertebrates as prey including insects.
Lyrebirds are long-lived birds with a life span as long as thirty years. Female superb lyrebirds start breeding at the age of five or six, and males at the age of six to eight.
Males defend territories from other males. These may contain the breeding territories of up to eight females. Within the male territories, the males create or use display platforms. For the superb lyrebird, this is a simple mound of bare soil.
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| Male and Female Lyrebirds |
On these mounds they sing and dance in courtship display for potential mates. The male lyrebird can have several. The female builds an untidy nest where she lays a single egg. The egg is incubated over 50 days solely by the female who also fosters the chick alone.
Lyrebirds sing throughout the year, but the peak of the breeding season, from June to August, is when they sing with the most intensity. During this peak they may sing for four hours of the day, almost half the hours of daylight. The song of the superb lyrebird is a mixture of elements of its own song and any number of other mimicked songs and noises. Lyrebirds mimic with great accuracy the individual songs of other birds and the chatter of flocks of birds as well as other animals such as koalas and dingoes. They are also capable of imitating almost any sound and have been recorded mimicking human sounds such as a mill whistle, a cross-cut saw, chainsaws, car engines and car alarms, fire alarms, rifle-shots, camera shutters, dogs barking, crying babies, music, mobile phone ring tones, and even the human voice. But while the mimicry of human noises is widely reported, the extent to which it happens tends to be exaggerated and the phenomenon is unusual.
If this video doesn't play, try this link and this one
As a young boy, my family used to drive up into the Dandenong ranges behind Melbourne for picnics. We could always hear these birds (along with many others) and sometimes see one. Sixty years on this area is now well developed and the bird's habitat has suffered accordingly.
The lyrebird has been featured as a symbol and emblem many times.
It is on the reverse of the Australian 10-cent coin.
A stylized superb lyrebird appears in the transparent window of the Australian 100 dollar note.
A silhouette of a male superb lyrebird is the logo of the Australian Film Commission.
An illustration of a male superb lyrebird, in courtship display, is the emblem of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.
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