Is human interaction re-writing the Superb Lyrebird’s song in Sherbrooke Forest?

In the documentary The Message of the Lyrebird, film-maker Nick Hayward recorded the sound of a Superb Lyrebird mimicking a chainsaw, catching the attention of biologist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

Was the sound real, or was the lyrebird reproducing a natural sound? And was the lyrebird mimicking other human sounds?

About 160 Superb Lyrebirds currently call the Sherbrooke Forest in the Dandenong Ranges National Park home. The Eastern Melburnian spoke with Jan Incoll, secretary of the Sherbrooke Lyrebird Study Group, to find out more.

• Volunteers from the Sherbrooke Lyrebird Study Group have been running an annual count of the unique species – known as the “Dawn Survey” – since 1970.

🛑Keep your distance: Jan Incoll has been watching lyrebirds so long she’s known locally as the “Lyrebird Lady”. She said she has seen first-hand how visitors to the forest can have an impact on local populations.

• 🗣️“We love sharing our knowledge with people, but we don’t want more people in the forest,” said Incoll. “There’s enough, we don’t need it.”

• 🗣️ “Group members have said a particular bird in Ferntree Gully said ‘piss off, go get the ranger’ but I couldn’t hear that. Sometimes, you see weird behaviour, but you don’t understand it. I wish I did.” 

🎶 Is it lyrebird nature or human bias? La Trobe University Research Centre for Future Landscapes and Department of Ecological, Plant and Animal Sciences research fellow Dr Alex Maisey said lyrebird mimicry can take generations for sounds to enter their repertoire.

• 🗣️ “Lyrebirds learn which songs to sing culturally,” Maisey told the Eastern Melburnian. “It seems to take many, many years for a lyrebird to integrate a new sound into a population.”

🎤 Improvisation, not innate: Maisey said he had never heard human-origin sounds in the male lyrebirds’ primary songs.

• 🗣️ “They do have some calls where sometimes males are courting females outside the breeding season,” said Maisey. “That’s where you hear these weird sounds and it appears as though they’re improvising and they just do these random sounds.”

🔥Fire threats on the horizon: Maisey said there were bigger threats to local populations beyond humans, including fire and feral deer populations impacting nesting habitat.

• 🗣️ “With climate change, I expect to see pretty dire consequences across the distribution of the lyrebird,” said Maisey. “More fires are definitely going to affect the species.” 

🌡️ Heat on the way: According to the Bureau of Metrology, the last financial year running from July 2024 to June 2025 was officially Australia’s warmest on record, with the national average temperature 1.68 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average.

• According to the Australian and New Zealand Council for fire and emergency services – also known as AFAC – there would be an increased risk of fire for most of western and north-east Victoria this summer, due to severe rainfall deficits.

• The National Climate Risk Assessment report, released earlier in the year, detailed how climate change threatens and will continue to endanger our natural flora and fauna.

⏭️ What’s needed next? Maisey said adequate funding and control measures were still needed to keep the future of lyrebirds secure.

• 🗣️ “It’s important we recognise the important habitats to lyrebirds, particularly cool temperate rainforest areas,” said Maisey. “Fairly intensive management [is needed] if we’re to conserve the biodiversity we all love.”

Image Credit: Dr Alex Maisey