Lloyd Nielsen wrote, 03 Nov 2010:
> > My impression from following them for those years was that the Tamborine > Albert’s were an ancient population – they would have been isolated from > the main population on the MacPhersons and the Main Range for many > thousands of years from the lay of the country.
Their vocalisations support this. Tamborine Albert’s have just a single rather simple territorial song. Those in Lamington N P (geographically the closest) have three versions of terr. song, all quite different from the Tamborine song.
As well as terr. songs and mimicry cycles, Albert’s display-song sometimes includes a strange sequence which has been dubbed the “gronking” song because it includes loud “gronk gronk” notes. It includes phrases of rather soft notes with marked rhythm. Two slightly different notes are repeated to form the rhythm. All the Lamington Albert’s use ‘waltz’ time: AbbAbbAbb … But on Tamborine, the second note is just repeated 10 or 12 times: Abbbbbbbbbbbb.
In various other localities I have found 2, 4, 5, and 6 ‘beats to the bar’. But strangely the only other population with a gronking song similar to Tamborine’s is the one in Toonumbar N P, which is on the southern side of the Richmond Valley, south from Mt Lindsay.
Incidentally, O’Reilly’s Guesthouse in Lamington N P sell an Albert’s Lyrebird DVD. It includes a gronking sequence and you can see the bird pick up one of the vines of his display platform and tap it on the one below to make a soft tapping sound in perfect time with his voice. If you can accept rhythm-sticks as a ‘musical instrument’,then we have a wild bird accompanying his song on a musical instrument.
Cheers
Syd
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