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.
Imagine a 10’ tall lyrebird roaming free thru the streets…honking, pretending to be a camera, an ambulance, a fire truck.
At night it keeps repeating parts of the news…“and the president will invade Eur! And the p…”
My best guess is that’s why we don’t see any of those things these days. Someone or something got pissed.
… What?
Song birds must have been much larger in prehistoric times I assume. Maybe not 11’ tall but what about the size of a crow or a dog? Imagine chirping so loud you can still hear it if you close your doors.
Australia has song birds about the size of a crow, they’re called Magpies. They are at times aggressively territorial, extremely intelligent, family orientated and very pleasant to wake up to in the morning.
Occasionally silly https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hu3hrXjMtNI
Occasionally terrifying https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EXYf2DTOsvI
Song at 1:23 of the second video.
Yeah, like that, but with constant song bird singing.