The Fantastic Lyre Bird of Australia

It's been called "Nature's Tape Recorder"

Aug 05, 2023

Greetings, fellow travelers! I hope you will enjoy this journey as much as I have enjoyed planning it. :)

Today we are going to travel to the wonderful land Down Under, Australia, otherwise known as Oz. Now, in Australia, we will all be wearing Akubras - The kind of hat that Crocodile Dundee wore…

We are going on an expedition to find the enigmatic Lyre Bird, and I couldn’t have made a better choice for our first trip if I had known what I was doing :)

A little announcement: Be sure to visit the Homepage, where there is additional information to be found. The tabs across the top hold more than archives; There is supplemental info on the people involved, the weekly topic, and the printing processes used, as well as links to other related sites to explore.

The Main Painting

All right, we’ve arrived safely, and…don’t look now, but I think we’ve spotted one of our subjects at the top of the page. Take a look at it and see if you can deduce why it is called a Lyre Bird.

I’m sure some of you have got it; it’s because when the bird’s tail feathers are spread out a bit further, it makes the tail look very much like a lyre… you know, like those Ancient Greek harp kinds of instruments…

This beautiful Painting of an Australian Lyre Bird is included in the Birds of Australia collection by John Guild, but we’ll get to him in a bit.

I downloaded this image through Archive.org, where the whole collection is available online. This image can be found in Vol. 3 of 7 of Birds of Australia by John Gould.

The quality of the illustrations in this book is amazing! Most were drawn up by Gould’s wife, Elizabeth, although many had to be finished by Henry Constantine Richter after she passed away in 1841.

Because this book is now in the public domain, that means you are free to use the illustrations inside it however you want. You can print them to hang on your wall, use them as postcards, or just set them as a phone background.

I use a lot of vintage stuff to make illustrations and clipart. They’re great for scrapbooking and card making, all kinds of crafts, really. And the best part is, they’re free.

(Please note: I did some extensive cleaning up on the above image. Also, Substack wouldn’t let me post the image at its full resolution. But if you have a use for it, you are free to take it. If you want the larger version, you can download it through Archive.org,)

This painting was done with the newly emerging lithograph technique, which you can read about on the homepage.

John and Elizabeth Gould

During the nineteenth century, there was a huge surge in interest in ornithology, and, consequently, in the production of exceptional ornithological books, featuring exquisite bird illustrations with intricate details. Everyone loved birds!

This remarkable progress can be attributed primarily to the advent of lithography, an innovative printing technique that allowed artists to accurately reproduce their original vibrant and colorful images, often created using watercolors.

John Gould (1804 – 1881) emerged as arguably the most prominent figure during this era of illustrated bird book publication, earning him the moniker Bird Man. Yet, his remarkable story extends beyond the efforts of one individual striving to fulfill his vision. It is generally believed that without his wife, Elizabeth, he would never have gotten where he did.

There is so much to tell of their lives that it could fill a book (and has,) and we are going to run into John and Elizabeth Gould many times during our travels. So today, we will just cover a basic overview of this incredible couple and their impact on the study of birds, and especially on their illustration.

John’s Background

John Gould was born in Lyme Regis, England, the first son of a gardener.

It is probable that neither John nor his father had much education.

After working on Dowager Lady Poulett's glass house, his father obtained a position on an estate near Guildford, Surrey, and then in 1818, Gould Sr became the foreman in the Royal Gardens of Windsor. Now, this was a huge step up for this family.

For a while, John worked with his father in the gardens, where he spent a lot of his time studying the wildlife in the area. His classrooms were the fields and gardens of Windsor and the birds and animals that inhabited them.

The Royal Gardener, J. T. Aiton, took an interest in John, mentoring and training him as a gardener from 1818 through 1824 (from age 14 to age 20.) During this time, John started teaching himself the art of taxidermy. His skills progressed, and he became very accomplished in the art.

He even made some money for himself by selling stuffed birds and blown eggs to the wealthy college boys at Eton.

He became so adept at taxidermy that In 1824 he set himself up in business in London as a taxidermist, and his skill helped him so much that he won himself an appointment, in 1828 (age 24) as the animal preserver (taxidermist) at the Museum of the Zoological Society of London.

I got the idea through my research that, at the time, taxidermy was not particularly looked highly upon as a profession. In fact, he was referred to several times as the bird stuffer.

Now John might not have been well-educated, but he was a hard worker, and, as it turned out, a very shrewd businessman. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Elizabeth’s Background

Not very much is known of Elizabeth’s (1804 – 1841) upbringing. She was born into a military family and, as a young middle-class woman, she worked as a tutor of French, Latin, and music. She wasn’t very happy in that position.

But she had also developed the skills that helped her to become an accomplished amateur artist. During that time, it was common for well-bred young ladies to be taught skills in painting, embroidery, and botany, so it wasn’t that surprising that she was as proficient an artist as she was.

Marriage and the Start of Something Big

She married John Gould in 1829 when they were both aged 24, possibly meeting through her brother, who was also a taxidermist.

In any case, John soon realized her proficiency as an artist. He, himself, was not so much. He could draw well enough to sketch out a rudimentary layout of how he wanted things done, and he had a marvelous memory for the details he had seen while observing birds.

The story is told that when he realized the enormous opportunity for using the new lithography techniques in making prints, he and his friend decided to go into business, with his associate, Vicors, doing the writing and John being responsible for the Artwork.

When Elizabeth heard about the idea, she asked, “But John, who will do the painting on the stones?”

“Why, you, of course,” he answered, already having that planned in his own head.

Elizabeth began her professional life by producing ornithological drawings intended to supplement John’s letters to colleagues. John encouraged her to learn the technique of lithography and asked his collaborator, the young Edward Lear, to instruct her in this skill.

Once proficient in this art form, she created illustrations that built on John’s more rudimentary drawings. Early evidence of her artistic ability is provided by her production of 50 lithographic plates for inclusion in Charles Darwin’s “The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle – Part III Birds” published in 1838, for which she was not given credit.

The Australian Expedition

In 1838 John Gould and his wife Elizabeth sailed to Australia with the express purpose of studying birds from the antipodes. The couple, together with the collector John Gilbert, their eldest son and Elizabeth’s nephew, sailed to Tasmania to meet the vice-regal family, Governor Sir John Franklin, and his wife. In February 1839, Gould sailed to Sydney, leaving his pregnant wife with the Franklins, and he returned in April for the birth of their son.

In May, he sailed to Adelaide to meet the famous explorer Charles Sturt, who was about to lead an expedition to the Murray River.

Gould collected specimens across South Australia, returning again to Hobart in July. In just two years, Gould had traveled widely across the southeastern states, collecting specimens of Australian birds and other fauna. Elizabeth was missing her kids and not doing very well, so they returned home to England in May 1840.

The Birds of Australia in Seven Volumes

After the trip, Gould took a few years to complete his masterpiece called The Birds of Australia, written between 1840-48. It included a total of 600 plates in seven volumes, including 328 species that had not appeared in the literature before.

Elizabeth, who had illustrated several of his earlier works, made hundreds of drawings of the 681 specimens for publication in The Birds of Australia.

The plates for the book were produced by lithography, with Elizabeth producing 84 plates before she died in 1841. After her death, 595 plates were produced by HC Richter from Elizabeth's drawings. In total, both in text and with the plates, the book became the first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia. Only 250 sets of the seven-volume work were printed.

You can find many of the prints from The Birds of Australia over at Wikimedia Commons, another organization dedicated to providing access to content in the public domain. They include loads of parrot illustrations as well as others. There are several additional places where these images can be found also, such as Biodiversity Library and Flickr.

This is an excerpt from John’s own writing about the Lyre Bird, which he calls the “Menura.” In the interest of not sending too many images in one newsletter, and having no idea how many of you would be interested in reading his account, I chose to simply give you a bit of a taste of it. Anyone interested can read the whole thing on the home page under “Supplemental.”

(PS. I just a little while ago also placed an OCR version in Supplemental as well, and you might find that easier to read.)

Illustration of a lyrebird from An account of the English colony in New South Wales by David Collins (1804).

In the early days of the settlement of New South Wales by the English, the first Lyre Birds to be examined by natural scientists were sent to England deceased, and they had no way of knowing precisely how the tail feathers actually looked. I haven’t found out who actually first thought they crossed their tails like this, but I will add that if and when I come across it. But this is how several very early renderings depict them.

About the Bird

I can totally understand why John would pick this bird to represent Australia; it is totally unique and extremely fascinating in several ways.

Lyrebirds are ancient Australian animals: the Australian Museum in Sydney has fossils of lyrebirds dating back around 15 million years.

The Lyrebird reportedly came close to extinction in the early 1900s as it was hunted for its ornate tail feathers. In the 1911 publication, Pros and cons of the plumage bill, bird protectionist James Buckland states that “over 400 lyre-birds were killed in one district in a single season to supply the London plumage market”

I plan to look into this further and report back to you. The lyrebird (sometimes lyre bird) is really a fascinating creature, and I am happy it did not go extinct.

Except for its astonishing tail feathers, the lyrebird isn’t all that pretty. But they certainly have other ways of being fascinating. To begin with, they are known to some as nature’s tape recorders; they seem to be able to mimic anything at all —

From Wikipedia:

The song of the lyrebird is a mixture of elements of its own song and mimicry of other species. Lyrebirds render with great fidelity the individual songs of other birds and the chatter of flocks of birds, and also mimic other animals such as possums, koalas and dingoes. Lyrebirds have been recorded mimicking human sounds such as a mill whistle, a cross-cut saw, chainsaws, car engines and car alarms, fire alarms, rifle-shots, camera shutters, dogs barking, crying babies, music, mobile phone ring tones, and even the human voice.

The second fascinating thing about them is their mating ritual, during which the male will build a mound of earth to stand on, bring his tail feathers over his head and shake them vigorously, all the while reciting just about every sound he has ever learned. The ritual can go on over and over for very long periods of time.

Mrs. Wilkinson and James

The story is told that back in the 1930s, there was an Australian bird who had this thing for a human lady named Mrs. Wilkinson who lived there in Australia. So the bird would visit her daily for food which she always provided. She named the bird "James."

When James the bird decided to woo Mrs. Wilkinson, he built a mound in her backyard, stood on top of it, and sang. Mrs. Wilkinson, naturally flattered, invited some human friends to listen.

According to those who were there, on one occasion, James sang for 43 minutes. Because James was a superb lyrebird (that's what they're actually called in English,), his songs included sounds he had heard in the woods and suburbs where he lived.

Lyrebirds, being the world's most gifted mimics, and according to Wikipedia, James' love song to Mrs. Wilkinson included a kookaburra's laughing song, the calls of cockatoos, wattle-birds, starlings, parrots, an automobile horn, a rock-crushing machine, and a jackhammer.

The Famous Chook

Amongst superb lyrebirds, the one with the largest known mimic abilities was Chook, a lyrebird who lived in Adelaide Zoo for many decades until his death in 2011.

At some point, Chook began freaking out zoo patrons walking past his enclosure by mimicking the sound of various power tools, including a chainsaw.

It would later emerge that Chook had picked up the noises when a nearby panda enclosure was undergoing renovations and had inexplicably decided to add the sound of a sledgehammer to his repertoire of sounds because, as one Reddit reader put it, if there’s apparently one thing lady lyrebirds love, it’s the soothing sound of a chainsaw tearing through wood.

Chook, not content with just emulating the sound of heavy machinery, was also apparently quite adept at mimicking the sound of a camera shutter.

This impressed none other than famed naturalist David Attenborough, who booked the bird to appear in one of his documentaries.

Yes, Chook was so talented that he somehow managed to score television gigs. Although, to be fair, Attenborough never told anyone that Chook was from a zoo, instead suggesting that he was a wild animal that was emulating “the sounds of the forest.”

A little white lie that resulted in many watching Attenborough’s show that all superb lyrebirds can assume chainsaw mode instead of it being an ability only possessed by those at a zoo.

However, if one Lyrebird can do it, it can't be too wrong to assume any of them could if they heard the sound often enough.

Well, we have reached the end of our first expedition, I hope you enjoyed the trip :)

Some Final Thoughts

There are so very many more fascinating things to tell about the Goulds, and hundreds of birds to do it with, so I will definitely be covering them again.

Having done this first newsletter, I realize that many Artists will be difficult to cover in a single newsletter, and there were a lot of supplemental stories I really wanted to include, but, again, I didn’t want to make it so long that people might turn away from it.

A lot of things can be added in later, but I guess we will play it by ear.

What are YOUR thoughts? Please let me know how you liked this newsletter, and any other thoughts or suggestions you may have.

I can always be reached at katrina5047@gmail.com

Bye, for now, my friends, and keep looking up! :)