The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs also wiped out all songbirds, except for in (ark) Australia. Australian songbirds then spread out to rest of the planet.
The closest living descendents (aka basal lineages) are the Lyrebird and the Rufus scrub bird. The lyrebird’s song is a mixture of its own song and other birds songs. They have been also been known to mimic chainsaws, car alarms, camera shutters, and human speech.
Love it. I will from now on imagine every song bird as singing in an Australian accent.
Every morning they’re screaming “g’day, mate!”
More like “Wanna root?”
They’re screaming something! Torresian Crows, Pied Currawongs, Noisy Miners, every morning they’re around my yard yelling at the top of their little lungs!
I’ve got a gaggle of kookaburras in the neighborhood too. Only a few lorikeets and an occasional cockatoo.
I mean not to nitpick but there are (were?) hundreds of aboriginal languages, none of which were related to the colonialist accent. And they were there for like thousands of years. So like fuck these birds if they’re speaking English tbh
To suggest a bird should confirm to a culture is insane. To the birds, both indigenous and colonial cultures would be a drop in the ocean compared to what they’ve seen.
Sorry, it was tongue in cheek! But Christ now I wonder what they’ve seen o_0