Fig. 10.11.

A, Recording of kookaburra duet and B, magpie mimicry of the duet. Interestingly, the magpie attempted to copy the duet rather than the individual bird. Note that the magpie copied the exact number of staccato calls in exactly the same amount of time. Hence the magpie’s rendition is completely faithful to the rhythm. The sound intensity is also matched precisely. It also tries to sound husky (introducing more noise into the call than magpies would have in their own song), placing the energy of the call at the same frequency levels as the kookaburras (darker lines at ~1 and 5 kHz respectively. Still, the magpie’s sequence lacks the extensive ‘noisy’ components of the kookaburra calls.