The lyre bird.



215



THE LYRE BIRD.


(THE AUSTRALIAN MOCKING BIRD).


By Edwin Ashby.


(Supplied bij Mr. Frank Finn.)


While American writers speak proudly of their mocking bird,

we in Australia have probably the cleverest mocking bird to he

found in any part of the world. The first question my readers ask

is no doubt “ What does it look like ?” In size it is quite as big as

a white leghorn hen, with a very much longer tail, longer legs and

very long tapering claws ; in the specimen now lying on my table,

the hind claw is over 1| inches long. The claws and strong feet

are of great use to the bird in scratching for insects, beetles, grubs,

and snails amongst the fallen tree fern fronds and dead sticks with

which the ground is thickly covered in the tree fern gullies which

form the true home of the lyre bird. The colour of the bird is dark

gvey on the underside and the upper and tail dark olive brown, a

shade of colour that makes it difficult to see the bird amongst the

thick shadows of the undergrowth.


The name lyre bird is not given, as some of my small friends

have thought, because it deceives other birds and people by pretend¬

ing to be what it is not, if that was the reason its name would he

spelt “ Liar Bird,” but it is named after a musical instrument called

a lyre, owing to the cock bird having a most wonderful tail over two

feet long, in which the two principal feathers are shaped like the

musical instrument of the same name. The tail of the hen bird is

18in. long and the two outer feathers are half the length of the

feathers in the cock s tail, but are banded with chestnut and trans¬

parent bands and are of the same ’* lyre” like shape as the outer

feathers in the cock’s tail.


Now about the home of the lyre bird, I am sorry to say

that we have none in South Australia, although we are trying to get

the Government to introduce them on to Kangaroo Island, where

they will be free from the danger of foxes.


You must come with me in thought to the Mount Dandenong

Ranges near Melbourne, or better still, to the wet, big tree country

in Gippsland, about 100 miles east of Melbourne in Victoria. There



