A visitor to Adelaide Zoo heard the sound of an instant camera taking a photo, but when she turned around to look for who had taken it, a bird was standing there.

Remarkable footage taken by Stephanie Kothe shows a superb lyrebird called Nova eerily imitating a Polaroid camera shutter noise. Nova must have heard the noise from one of the zoo’s visitors.

Lyrebirds, endemic to Australia, are famous for their mimicry ability, with approximately 80% of a male’s songs imitating other bird species.

But lyrebirds can imitate other noises they hear too, including radios, chainsaws, and cameras.

Stephanie Kothe, the visitor to Adelaide Zoo, says she was stunned when she witnessed Nova imitating a camera. “How? How do you make that noise?” she asks.

After making the camera noise, Nova starts perfectly mimicking a kookaburra. “Now you are showing off,” says Kothe.

The older lyrebirds get, the more accomplished they are at their vocalizations; Nova is a 37-year-old male.

“In the wild, they only live 20 to 30 years old so Nova is getting quite old for a superb,” explains Kiona, a bird keeper at Adelaide.

“Nova can mimic things like other birds around the zoo; he mimics magpies, rosellas (parrots), and rainbow lorikeets. He also mimics some of the other birds inside the aviary, so the laughing kookaburra; he also mimics blue-winged kookaburra. He can also mimic human-made noises, so things like chainsaws. He can mimic the sound of a radio button click.”

The clip of Nova impersonating a radio begins just after the one-minute mark in the video below; it is worth listening to.

A big part of the reason superb lyrebirds imitate other birds and sounds they hear is to attract mates. They are competing against other males in a song of courtship. The more complex and convincing the vocalization, the more impressive it can be.

Back in 2011, David Attenborough’s Life of Birds filmed a superb lyrebird imitating a camera shutter . It also mimicked a car alarm and a chainsaw.

The BBC show also filmed the lyrebird impersonating a kookaburra so well that an actual kookaburra nearby responded to his call.

Image credits Header photo licensed via Depositphotos .