Albert's Lyrebird

About the Albert's Lyrebird

Albert's lyrebird (Menura alberti), sometimes known as the northern lyrebird, is a timid, pheasant-sized songbird which is endemic to subtropical rainforests of Australia, in a small area on the state border between New South Wales and Queensland. The rarer of the two species of lyrebirds, Albert's lyrebird is named after Prince Albert, the prince consort of Queen Victoria, queen of the United Kingdom. It lacks the elegant lyre-shaped tail feathers of the superb lyrebird and is found in a much more restricted range.

The total population of Albert's lyrebirds was estimated at only 3,500 breeding birds in 2000, with one of the smallest distributional ranges of any bird on the continent. Due to its remote habitat, Menura alberti had not been discovered when famous English ornithologist John Gould first published his Birds of Australia in 1848, although he named it (after Prince Albert) and added it in a supplement in 1850. Under taxonomic convention, he would normally have been assigned the credit for describing the species and assigning its scientific name. However, the credit as scientific describer instead went to French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon... Wikipedia →