Trimming the song allows the honey-tongued lotharios to quickly showcase their impressive repertoires when trying to impress the ladies

Somewhere in the distance, she hears her true love calling. Racing eagerly towards the melodic sound, she reaches the clearing, only to find that there are no eligible young bachelors to be seen, only a drab grey lyrebird. She searches high and low for her new beau, but only the lyrebird can be seen. She leaves the clearing sad and single.

This heartbreaking story is one Anastasia Dalziell of the Research School of Biology, saw play out time and time again while carrying out her PhD research in the romantic surrounds of the Victorian forests.

Dalziell was studying the extraordinary karaoke abilities of the male lyrebird. These talented vocalists rarely sing their own song, skipping seamlessly between near-perfect imitations of other species instead.

“Lyrebirds are amazingly accurate mimics of other birds’ songs,” says Dalziell. “During the breeding season, males imitate the calls of around 25 species of birds. This mimicry is the accomplishment of years of practice and is probably used to show female lyrebirds the quality of the singer.”

To test just how accurate these lovebirds are, Dalziell compared the acoustics of the call of the grey shrike-thrush – a small native bird also known as the harmonica bird because of its complex and beautiful song – with the lyrebird’s cover version. She found the replica was spot on.

“Lyrebirds are great at imitating the structure and notes of shrike-thrush songs. However, they sing an abridged version containing fewer repeated notes than the songs sung by real shrike-thrushes.”

Trimming the song allows the honey-tongued lotharios to quickly showcase their impressive repertoires when trying to impress the ladies, says Dalziell.

“Singing an abridged version means that they can demonstrate both the accuracy and versatility of their mimicry in a shorter period of time than if they mimicked the whole shrike-thrush song. Their audience probably has better things to do than listen to males singing all day long.”

With the lyrebirds singing such an accurate version, Dalziell wondered if shrike-thrushes could tell the difference between a mimic and the real thing.

“We wanted to ‘ask an expert’ how accurate lyrebird mimicry was, so we played back recordings to the shrike-thrushes themselves,” says Dalziell.

The shrike-thrushes moved eagerly towards the speakers when the song was played, regardless of whether it was the real song or the lyrebird’s rendition.

Dalziell then played the mimicked song along with recordings of lyrebirds mimicking other birds’ songs, hoping to give the shrike-thrushes a clue as to the identity of the singer.

“The shrike-thrushes were a bit better at distinguishing between the mimicked songs and the real thing once they were given a clue.

However, there were still quite a few cases of mistaken identity,” she says.

Until the feathered females of the forest learn to tell the difference, it seems they are doomed to be dateless and disappointed.