Happy New Year. I know things feel really hard for a lot of us right now, so let me tell you something important:
In the highland rainforest of NSW, in the Werrikimbe region, there’s a community of superb lyrebirds. Lyrebirds are known for their unparalleled mimicry: they can reproduce the call of any bird they hear (and many other sounds as well). They collect songs like crows collect shiny objects. The variety and complexity of their repertoire, and the skill with which they deliver it, determines their reproductive success.
They also compose songs of their own. These songs vary from region to region; they are learned by lyrebirds when they're young, and passed down from generation to generation with remarkable stability. If a lyrebird finds or produces a new melody that other lyrebirds like, they absorb it into the communal repertoire.
The lyrebirds that live in the Werrikimbe are called flute lyrebirds because in winter, when they're in love, they sing a complex rising melody which sounds like scales played on a flute. This "flute accent" exists nowhere else in the world; it’s unique to this one community. On cold mornings, it floats down through the mists like an enchantment.
How did this haunting melody come about? It's said that a young boy kept a tame lyrebird, and every day the bird listened to him practicing the flute. Then one day the bird escaped. It went to live with its wild brethren, and taught them this new song.
But the truth is much more magical: Lyrebirds composed this song all on their own. It's more complex than any human flautist could ever hope to achieve, and it’s got features unique to lyrebird melody and anatomy.
Lyrebirds live and breathe music. They are built for music. They spend their lives studying the soundscape. They listened to the world around them, all of the pain and suffering and desire and joy, and this is what they sang back into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00nrAh2zVWo
#lyrebirds #AustralianBirds #werrikimbe #birds #BirdsOfFediverse #music #song #EnvironmentalHumanities #flute #australia #northernNSW