ASET找细节题：一步一步来

The Forest's Greatest Mimic

The Forest's Greatest Mimic

In the damp forests of south-eastern Australia lives a bird that can sound like almost anything. The superb lyrebird, a brown, pheasant-sized bird with powerful legs, is famous for copying the calls of other birds so accurately that it can be hard to tell the copy from the real thing. A single male may perform the songs of kookaburras, whipbirds, rosellas and a dozen other species in one long, unbroken stream. Lyrebirds kept in wildlife parks have even been recorded copying car alarms, camera shutters and the whine of a chainsaw.

Singing is mainly the work of the males, and it is loudest in winter, the breeding season. Each male clears several small patches of forest floor and scrapes up low mounds of soil to stand on. From these stages he sings and dances, throwing his long tail forward over his head until it forms a shimmering silver veil. The tail is made of sixteen feathers, and two of them, curved at the ends, give the bird its name: together they are shaped like a lyre, an ancient stringed instrument.

The female does all the work of raising the young. She builds a large domed nest of sticks, often on a stump or a rocky ledge, and lays a single egg. The chick hatches after about seven weeks and stays in the nest for several weeks more.

Lyrebirds spend much of every day scratching through leaf litter with their strong feet, searching for worms, beetles and other small creatures. In doing so, they turn over a great deal of soil, which helps fallen leaves break down and may even reduce the fuel available for bushfires. For this reason, the lyrebird is sometimes called a "forest gardener".