Paul & All,
I enjoyed your recording Paul. I suspect your lyrebird was giving
subsong. I could pick up several whisk alarm calls, plus mimicry of
pied and grey currawongs, whipbird, cockatoo, crimson rosella,
kookaburra, a snatch of territorial song, and a couple of the loud
blick display calls. As you say, there was no mimicry of man-made
sounds, nor would this be likely if these are wild birds. It is the
tame birds in zoos that mimic human sounds (as was filmed by
Attenborough). With the human voices in the background of your
recording I surmise that the Jehosophat Gully lyrebirds are somewhat
accustomed to human presence, so you may have a better chance of
getting close by stalking.
Best time to record, as Syd Curtis says, is winter. With my local
superbs in the Central Tablelands of NSW, I find May and June are the
best months. To avoid motorbikes and people you might be best to try
for the dawn song but you would need to get there in the dark. In my
area, there can be many lyrebirds calling around 4 pm when the late
afternoon sun is hitting the mountain tops. In areas thick with
lyrebirds (such as Kinglake NP), they may be more inclined to call
throughout the day, setting each other off as it were.
If you have a Telinga dish, that should be useful. I have had
success stalking lyrebirds and using a shotgun mic. Try to get as
close as you can without scaring the lyrebird away (easier said than
done as they are easily spooked). Best bet is to pinpoint just where
the nearest lyrebird is calling, then try to stalk it if practicable,
I find that by moving forward when the lyrebird is calling they are
less likely to hear you coming, but you must stop dead when they stop
calling because if they hear a twig snap they may flee. Wear dull
coloured clothing e.g. cammo or dull green, and cover all shiny
things like your recorder and dish, and glasses if you wear them
(wear a hat and keep your head down). Keep out of sight of the
lyrebird. The other hazard when stalking is if you happen on a
female lyrebird nearby she may let out an alarm signal and the male
will stop calling or flee or both.
I have found that opportunistic recording works best for me and have
obtained some good recordings at a distance of 10-20 metres. If you
are further away, and conditions are calm, you may still get a useful
recording using a dish as lyrebird song is quite loud.
Wear warm clothes and maybe thermal underwear and fingerless gloves.
Standing or sitting for an hour, waiting for a lyrebird to call in
mid winter, is one of the coldest occupations I know!
By the way, my local lyrebirds have not been calling well in the past
few years, due to drought. If they are hungry or stressed, they do
not call well. But if you have seen lots of lyrebird scratchings at
Kinglake, that does sound promising.
Good luck!
Vicki Powys
Australia
On 22/04/2008, at 8:56 AM, Paul Jacobson wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I was up at Kinglake National Park on Sunday. The area we visited -
> Jehosophat Gully - was teeming with Lyrebirds judging by the amount
> of scratching in the undergrowth we heard. Unfortunately the
> surrounding winding roads are a favorite weekend haunt Melbourne's
> motorcycling community to it's pretty noisy.
>
> I managed one recording, but there were people talking, overflying
> aircraft and motor cycles in the background... Still it's interesting
> that none of these influences show up in the calls. I'm keen to try
> to get some cleaner recordings, so perhaps Syd could advise the best
> times to record Lyrebirds. I understand that the next few months are
> the lead up to breeding season, so the birds will be quite vocal. Is
> there a best time of day to record?
>
> For those willing to listen through the racket the recording can be
> found here:
>
> http://www.urbanbirder.com.au/audio/download/15/
> Lyrebird_Jehosaphat.mp3
>
>
> This is one of my first outings with the Telinga Universal fitted
> with an AT3032 so I haven't quite mastered the art of handling the
> dish.
>
> cheers
> Paul
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> "While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
> sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie
> Krause
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