Hi Syd,
I am probably in a good position to comment on this as I knew the late
Roland (Roley) Paine and have a vast amount of experience in the Washpool
and Gibraltar Range National Parks, as well as an interest in lyrebird
taxonomy.
Roley was the first Trust Ranger at Gibraltar Range and spent many years
living in the Park's residence as a National Parks & Wildlife Service Ranger
when the Service took over control of the Park. He spent much time
photographing wildlife and he and his then partner, Margaret Hodgson,
collaborated on a number of books on Australian flora. He and Margy were
later employed in Grafton doing interpretative work - photography,
brochures, publicity etc..
Roley told me that he had both species of lyrebirds in the Washpool and he
also claimed to have seen Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies and Eastern Quolls.
None of these species have been confirmed for the Park and the Rock-wallaby
would be well out of its known range and preferred habitat.
I wondered whether the confusion with the lyrebird was due to that fact that
the Gibraltar Range was considered to be the southern limit of the Edward's
race of the Superb Lyrebird and the names 'Edward' and 'Albert' became
confused. The Edward's race of the Superb Lyrebird was considered to be the
granite country lyrebird. Schodde and Mason (1999) in the Directory of
Australian Birds, Passerines, now give the Hunter River as the southern
limit of race edwardi. The rufous throat of the juvenile and immature
Superb Lyrebird may have also added to the confusion.
The question about whether both species occur together is interesting as
when I saw my first Albert's Lyrebirds running across the road in the Border
Ranges in the 1970s I thought that they must have been Superb Lyrebirds, as
the Albert's was considered to be an almost mythical inhabitant of the
densest rainforest gullies which was never to be seen by mortal humans. I
thought that both must have occurred together but in different habitats.
Even the two Birds Australia Atlases show the two species in the same 1
degree grid but one (Superb) occurs in the far west of the grid and the
other (Albert's) in the far east. The eastern most grid shown for the
Superb is most likely an error.
I was asked by someone (I think it was Walter Boles of the Australian
Museum) what species of lyrebird is found along the Casino Road between
Grafton and Casino as he heard what he believed to be a lyrebird there.
Superb Lyrebirds are absent from the large Clarence River floodplain. I
would suspect that this bird, if indeed it was a lyrebird, would have been a
Superb Lyrebird (race edwardi) at the eastern edge of its range.
Greg Clancy
Ecologist and Birding Guide
Coutts Crossing
NSW Australia
www.birdrangers.com
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