It was the 1930s and a flute-playing farmer, living in Dorrigo - the northern-coastal area of New South Wales - had a special pet bird. That special pet was a lyrebird who was able to mimic certain phrases of the flute-player's music.
Some of the songs which the flutist played were popular tunes of the day, like "The Keel Row" and "Mosquito's Dance."
After a few years, the farmer released his pet bird into the adjacent forest of New England National Park (which features a "lyrebird walk"). As the tale is told, he never saw the bird again.
Thirty years or so later, Neville Fenton - a park ranger in the New England National Park, near Dorrigo - recorded a singing lyrebird. Listening to the bird's music, Fenton thought he was listening to a performing flutist.
Curious, Ranger Fenton sent his recording to someone who could analyze it. Norman Robinson, an ornithologist, filtered the tunes to separate the lyrebird's song. As it happens, a lyrebird can carry two different tunes at the same time.
Once he isolated the tunes, Robinson was able to identify the lyrebird's music. He was singing his own version of "The Keel Row" and "Mosquito's Dance."
Read the rest of it here
I also found this:
In Wellington, New Zealand, the city zoo kept a number of native tui birds. These indigenous birds are known for their ability to imitate, and frequently incorporate common city sounds into their repertoire of bird song. The tui aviary was close to the howler monkey enclosure. So, naturally (or not) the tuis all learnt to howl like the howler monkeys. A bureaucratic decision to release the aviary tuis to an open bush area, known as Wilton Bush, meant that the once captive tuis were able to frolic with the already free native tuis in the bush. A year later, residents who lived near Wilton Bush started to complain that all the tuis that came into their gardens were howling like the howler monkeys at the Wellington Zoo.
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