Lyrebirds?

In Mt Field National Park, about seven kilometres up the road to Lake Dobson, there is a sign to the Lyrebird Nature Walk.

Is the sign still there? I haven’t checked for many years.

I see that the Parks and Wildlife pages still refer to a Lyrebird Nature Walk.

When I was at school there were reports that a lyrebird lived in the area. There was a spot on the road where we would all get out of the car and creep up a little path, peering into the bushes, and then stop in wonder at a small clearing. The sign appeared much later.

We never saw one.

 

 

“The superb lyrebird was introduced to Tasmania in the 1930s and 40s in order to save the bird from the perceived threat of foxes and habitat loss on the mainland.” University of Tasmania, Zoology website

I can’t find a mention of a direct sighting, anywhere on the net or in the literature.  I find only rumours and second hand reports.

In 2006, Alan Fletcher of “Birding Tasmania” wrote – that John & Shirley Tongue wrote –that:

“Lyrebirds were introduced into Tasmania’s Mt. Field National Park in 1934 … We have heard reports of sightings at Mt. Field, but have not experienced them ourselves.”  Birds in Tasmania

Is that second-hand or third-hand reporting? Either way, I haven’t found mention of an actual sighting. Maybe no one has been any more successful at seeing them than I was.

In 2006, also on the Birding Tasmania website, Lachie Clark said:

“I’ve seen or heard or seen mounds of Lyrebirds in plenty of forests around Hobart,so I guess they are expanding. They are normally in predictable places…everywhere in the wetter forests down south of Hobart, and in the forests around the Florentine valley and Tiger range around Maydena.
Amazingly, I found a mound up in the Central Highlands last Thursday! Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear or see any birds to confirm, but it was in my opinion definitely a lyrebird mound.”

 

Anyone know of a sighting of a lyrebird in Mt Field NP? As opposed to a rumour? Please comment.