The lyrebird suite.

Rothenberg, David

THE ALBERT'S LYREBIRD of Australia is one of the most impressive of all birds, with long curved plumes like the ancient Greek lyre and a powerful song to match. He's one of few birds to combine a magnificent appearance with an awesome and exact courtship display. Beneath his bouquet of a tail he's like a small brown pheasant, running quietly through the Queensland mountain rainforests, silent and inconspicuous, until he decides he wants to be heard, which is every day during his winter breeding season. Then he performs one of the most precisely choreographed rituals in the whole world of birds.

Every morning, just before dawn, he descends from his resting perch high in the trees and searches through the forest to a very special kind of display site, one of five or six he has identified in his territory. Unlike his more common cousin, the superb lyrebird, who performs on one-meter-round open mounds he takes several weeks to construct, the Albert's lyrebird finds his stages ready-made, like Marcel Duchamp. He needs a spot where a mass of thick vines hang close to the ground and then swing back up into the trees. Perched on one of these perfect spots, he begins his show.

He tosses his shimmering lyre-tail feathers tight over his head like an umbrella, so you can hardly see his face. Like a matador disguised behind a cape, he starts with a territorial call, announcing his place: Breep, booua, bwe, ba boo pu tee! Then he begins a series of flawless imitations of many of the other birds that share his home--satin bowerbirds, rosella parrots, yellow honeyeaters, kookaburras. Although some birds learn to sing in a matter of weeks, it takes an Albert's lyrebird at least six years to successfully learn this song. They live up to thirty years of age. In any forest group of thirty or forty birds, they all end up with the same series of mimicked sounds in roughly the same order, after those many years of practice that signal the arrival of maturity.

After several cycles repeating this song of imitations, he embarks on a back-and-forth kind of dance, with his two feet on the vines, shaking them enough so that the trees high up in front and behind him also shake, and he emits a different precise rhythmic music original and exact, gronk gronk gronk brr brr brr brt brr. The whole forest shakes with his dancing. His head is invisible, the feathers embrace him. And oh--did I mention the bright red tail feather that he provocatively presents front behind? It sticks straight up in quivering invitation. When he is done, he starts again. After a few rounds he'll take a break to claw the forest floor with his large talons, looking for roots and grubs to eat. Then he'll move on to the next platform to start the whole performance again.

In the natural world, a song and dance as spectacular as this can only mean one thing--this display is what female lyrebirds like to see and hear. Generations of female preference have led to the survival of appearances, songs, and behavior that might otherwise seem excessive and extreme. Why has the Albert's lyrebird evolved so magnificent a dance and so elaborate a song? Because of the elusive female lyrebird. She likes it.

But the chances that the lyrebird's impressive show will lead to mating success are quit slim. Female Albert's lyrebirds lay a single egg only once every two years. And there are not so many of them around, and competition for their attention is fierce. Still, the male lyrebird sings, dances, and performs every single day, all day of its winter life. In the summer his gaudy, swirling tail feathers fall off and he wanders the forest placidly eating, not troubled by the push of hormones. Next winter, the performance is up on the stage of vines again.

It's hard enough to see an Albert's lyrebird in the midst of his awesome display. But what would it be like to play music along with one? I was ready to try. I called my friend Michael Pestel, the man who had gotten me into the practice of jamming along with birds years ago in the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. I knew he'd be excited. "Michael, I've found our bird. He's only six thousand miles away." Pestel had also been looking to play along with a lyrebird in the wild. "The ornithologist Syd Curtis told me there's only one of his kind who wouldn't run from us. His name is George, and he lives in the Lamington National Park in Queensland. We have to go soon, while mating season is still on."

Pestel and I needed to find the Albert's lyrebird known as George because he is the only member of his wary, elusive species who can stomach the sight and sound of human beings. Any other member of his tribe would dash silently through the underbrush at full speed away from the first sound it heard of a clarinet or flute. George, though, is another story. He has been studied in the wild by two men, an ornithologist and a photographer, for twenty-five years and has learned to tolerate all sorts of strange recording and filming equipment. What would he think of the music of our species? So far, no one had asked him. We got on the plane.

Twenty-four hours later we were met at the Brisbane airport by the indefatigable Syd Curtis, seventy-six years old, sporting a tamoshanter and huge parabolic microphone on a tripod, resembling an overgrown leprechaun. There was a glint in his eyes--he's grateful to find two foreigners eager to share his obsession with one special lyrebird who has been tracked for a quarter of a century. This is the same man who picked up Olivier Messiaen at his hotel room at 5 A.M. to take him to hear an Albert's in 2988, when the great composer and bird song transcriber was eighty himself. We would retrace musical history.

On the wall of Syd's Brisbane house there is a photograph of a male lyrebird with a circle with a slash through it right over the bird's face, the international symbol for "no." I asked his wife Anne Curtis about this. "I simply hate lyrebirds," she laughs, "hate them. Had to. Otherwise things would have been too easy for my husband over there."

We drive the few hours up long winding roads past vineyards and villages. The higher we go, the thicker the forest becomes. We enter the national park that was under Syd's jurisdiction for many years, and the road ends at O'Reilly's Rainforest Guesthouse, the famous lodge that has introduced tourists to this landscape for decades. Here we meet the photographer Glen Threlfo, staff naturalist at the lodge, who gives nightly slide and video presentations of the wildlife and waterfalls found here. Over the many years he's spent in the forest tracking George, Glen has built blinds in the thickets to photograph him in secret, stalking, listening, but also trying to become his friend.

The next morning we awaken an hour before dawn and start walking down the sketchy trail that leads into George's territory. Making our way warily over fallen trees and the tangled underbrush, we walk quietly in near darkness into the piece of the forest held by our bird. At first all is quiet. Then, we hear the telltale territorial song high in the canopy. Breep, booua, bwe, ba boo pu tee! Breaap, booua, bwe, ba boo pu tee! a slightly speeding up descending and final rise to a phrase worthy of Claude Debussy in his famous flute piece Syrinx. We wondered whether, as he sat in the forest meticulously transcribing bird songs, if Messiaen ever felt the urge to whistle, to sing, or to play along on some kind of portable organ or harmonium, adding to the perfect splendor of the songs of birds. Being so reverential toward what he heard, I don't think he ever did. We had no such pretensions. I quietly click the latch and take the pieces of my rainforest wood clarinet out of its case.

Then, just as Syd predicted, after about fifteen minutes, George descends from the trees. He finds one of his branch platforms to begin his Albert cycle of mimicked songs. The sounds commence, in the order and form used by all the Albert lyrebirds in this district, precisely cultured and different from what other groups would do. I cannot believe my luck. He's picked a site just a few meters away from my tape recorder. George arches his lyre-shaped glimmering tail feathers right over his head into a curved dome of gossamer maroon. A single red back feather sticks straight up from his behind, a sudden bright surprise. The display begins, with a soundtrack composed of the sounds of all the other birds who inhabit this forest. It is winter, so most of them are silent. At the moment, we have only George to introduce their songs to us.

First, a sneep of the crimson rosella parrot, then the plink chee chee chee chee of the tiny yellow robin, then a high pink of a green catbird, then the harsh braaaa of the paradise riflebird. Next, a phrase of descending whistles and scratches from the satin bowerbird, that famous species who so loves blue. Ba bo de poo traaaaaawh tete pu traaaawhh aaaarrrhh. In our language it looks like nonsense, but in the voice of George it is strictly controlled: Chik. Arrh. The Aussie king parrot, then the crimson rosella again, and back to more lilts of the satin bowerbird. Ah errrh ah eh a eerrrrrrrhhh. The sound of a beak tapping on a branch, but reproduced with his voice, not his beak. Broo ah ha ha, that laughing kookaburra. Cree of the Lewin's honeyeater. Plink chee chee chee chee of the yellow robin again. Aaaarrrhh of the bowerbird. Parrot chiks. Flapping wings emulated as song, then faint burbles of a white-browed scrub wren. Mraaah of the riflebird. A break and a turn for the territorial call: Breaap, booua, bwe, ba boo pu tee! Back again to the rosella sneep. The cycle continues, with only slight variation. It's an organized run, a clear composition, not of easy musical tones, but harsh bird squeeps and braophs.

"This may not be easy," worries Pestel as he takes in this command performance. "What does George need us for? His music is complete in itself." Boo. Toot. Pe-bum, brealummph! Our music does not proceed in such strange words, but with melodies birdlike only in the mimicked sense. George at first is puzzled with the strange sounds. He pauses his concert for just a half second, but not much longer than that. "What are these strange foreign sounds getting in my way?" he might think. "They are not lyrebirds, what right have they to make noise at this hour at this warm winter time of year? This is my time, none other, that's the way this world is designed."

This rainforest has a wonderful echo, not crisp like a concert hall, but delicate as only a room muffled by living, green leaves can be. Whoooodleadleap. Burdelealap. The territorial call of a Michael Pestel. I'd know that flute rift anywhere. Me, I concentrate on the power of a single tone. A high B. Ping. Ping. Some tiny forest bird above matches it. George cannot stop, but he can change his song--in the smallest, subtle ways in response to what he hears.

This is far more than we expected. I'm twenty feet away from the one Albert's lyrebird in the whole world who will let humans get close enough to watch him do his marvelous dance and song. What do I do? I'm not even respectful enough to stand quietly and appreciate the opportunity. I cannot resist playing along. My single notes soon extrapolate to phrases, jumps up and down. Imitations of imitations, mimicry of the mimic. I know, as usual, I'm playing too much to earn a place in this forest. I try to learn from the proportions of George's music. Then I'll have a place in this forest as well.

At a certain moment in the cycle of cycles, he moves on to the booming conclusion, the series of harsh sounds known as the gronk that accompanies a claw-by-claw new rhythm that shakes the sticks of his platform of vines swinging up on the sides to shake the booyong trees above. Gruhnk gruhnk fzzz fzzzz fzzz fzzz, a soft almost electrical noise comes from the syrinx of George. He shakes his delicate shimmering tail feathers in another tilted arc and he freezes, just at the moment to catch the greatest power of the gleaming winter light.

The gronking is supposed to signal any available female that the time for mating has come. But the chances of George luring one in are small. Most of the females are down in the gullies, closer to the more wary male lyrebirds, and George's territory is higher up, on a higher hillside. It's good feeding land, but it can be lonely. Glen Threlfo's heard George pause from his song to spew out a mass of angry animal sounds rarely heard: shrieking possums, fighting pademelons, general squeals. "Right," he remembers, "I reckon it's all sheer frustration."

Glen has seen George mating, only once. "His tail was up in the air, just like those old paintings everyone says are incorrect." Only in the heat of passion is the lyrebird's tail held up in the shape of a lyre. "Ah," Glen smiled, "he really couldn't help himself."

"Maybe this bird knows that the yearning for the act means much more than the thing in itself," wonders Pestel. "It certainly takes a lot more of his time."

We hear George displaying from another platform, and approach him rather rapidly through the brush. Just past the bowerbird bower, littered with blue plastic spoons, he turns sideways, flicks his tail over his head, utters that whole series of alarm cries and possum screeches Glen warned us about. Maybe George's frustration concerns us, who are busy interrupting his solo concert, and he trots off to the north edge of the territory, past the human trail, off to forage a bit more. We hear nothing from him for some time. The whoom whoom whoom of a distant ground pigeon suddenly gives the soundscape a beat.

I listen to one full cycle of George before I join in. It is my wish to play a music worthy enough for this bird to accept. I try to place my clarinet in and around the breaks. I am dancing in the underbrush, feet on branches crackling, leaping up and down, curving my shoulders in imitation of those long delicate feathers I'll never swing. The resonance of the clarinet in the forest is full and clear, as if the wood that made the horn has somehow returned to its place. Like the Kaluli performers in New Guinea, awash in feathers, dance, and song, I too would become the bird. A great lyre of imaginary feathers girds my sound, curving over to surround my mind with crucial music. To you they are birds, to me they are musicians--their songs ever the same while we hunt for our proper place among their powerful voices in the forest.

Why do birds sing? For the same reasons we sing--because we can. Because we love to inhabit the pure realms of sound. Because we must sing--it's the way we have been designed to celebrate our ability to tap into the pure shapes of sound. We may use this ability in our greatest tasks; defining ourselves, defending our places, calling out to the ones we love. But form remains far more than function. We spend lifetimes immersed in the richness of these forms. 'Figure out' a symphony or a nightingale strophe and both sounds will still need to be performed, on and on way past the time in which your answer will be adequate. No explanation will ever erase the eternal need for music.

No matter what I learn and how little I know, I will never give up the chance to make music together with the voices of birds. To wing it, so to speak, and wait for what will cheep in return. Like all art, bird song works best when we let it play on. Like science, it is built on the music of endless previous generations, still evolving into new sounds. The music made the questions begin, but no answer will erase the gift of the song, one simple offering from human to animal and back.

New Jersey Institute of Technology

DAVID ROTHENBERG is the author of Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song, published by Basic Books. He is professor of philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the author and editor of numerous previous books, including Writing the World: On Globalization and Sudden Music. As a musician, he has six CDs out under his own name. You can hear some of his performances with birds at www.whybirdssing.com.