I hear it at dawn when I wake up. The five notes up and down, the voice gliding from one to the next. This bird in the tree by my bedroom has a unique song.  Once again, I wrap up in a robe and step out into the yard to see if I can spot which bird it is.
Somewhere in the tops of the unkempt bottlebrush tree there is rustling. There are bright lorikeets screeching, but I know the singer is not one of them. A fluster of wings somewhere else and the voice is gone.
Later in the morning, I hear it again. The voices of some birds, the passerines, are so expressive because of their remarkable anatomy. Like us, birds have a larynx but no vocal cords so they cannot use it for singing. But further down the windpipe, before it splits to go into each lung, there is a small bony box known as the syrinx. 

As air moves through the syrinx, these membranes and the attached muscles are squeezed and flexed to alter loudness and pitch. Not every bird has the musculature to be musical. But the ones that do can also sing high and low notes simultaneously. The legendary larks, nightingales and mockingbirds.
But these are not birds here in Byron. Whatever it is – why there must be two. Wait. I am sure I am hearing a duet. One bird starts and the other copies and elaborates. The beginning varies but there it is again. That same five note motif. The other voice flits around the phrase.
They are gone before I get up from the computer. The phone rings. I am off to a friend’s nearby for coffee. Their verandah is surrounded by trees. Some are paperbarks in flower.

‘Listen,’ says my friend. ‘That song.’
‘Oh,’ I freeze, straining to sense where is that singer. ‘We hear the very same song at my place too. Have you seen the bird?’
‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘But most days we hear it, maybe once or twice.’
Walking back, I scan the trees. More lorikeets. Several elegant ibis. Noisy miners. Brush turkeys. Magpies. But no singer.
Later, I am in the front of my house eying up the sky and wind. Which beach will be the best swim this afternoon? There is that achingly beautiful song again. I slowly slip under the gum tree. This time, I spot the bird, head thrown back, and beak open.

That bald headed knob nosed friarbird! With its leathery head and dull colours, who would pick it to be one of the most melodious of birds?
Friarbirds are honeyeaters. As a group. honeyeaters are unique to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, appearing in New Zealand and some Pacific Islands but most abundantly here in Australia. They are thought to have originated in Australia some fifty five million years ago. The most recent species the Eugenella was discovered a few years ago in the Clarke Ranges. The most endangered is the once ubiquitous Regent Honeyeater, of coastal NSW. Less than a hundred remain.

The friarbird seems abundant. Like other honeyeaters, it has a fringed tongue, like a paintbrush. It dabs at the nectar of a flower, ten darts per second.  It squeezes its tongue against the roof of its mouth. The liquids flow straight through a special chamber of the stomach directly to the intestines. The insects it may also eat are digested differently in an adjacent chamber of the stomach.

People often say there is a honeyeater species for every type of habitat throughout the country. The birds are well known for their association with uniquely Australian flowering plants. They are the most important pollinators for eucalypts, bottlebrushes and banksias among others.
Over months, they travel from one flowering area to another. They also have routes in a neighbourhood over a day. Apart from singing, they also spread gossip, contentment and alarms.
Working inside on my computer, I hear all the news from our ‘Tallowside Friarbird’. I think I understand a fair bit. I hear it harangue other birds when they come by. It mutters cheerfully about the general state of the treetops. It cries out when the neighbour’s cat approaches.

But what always makes me stop is when that bird breaks into song, elaborating on its unique motif. It is becoming that hit tune of a certain era in not only my life but others too. What do the other birds make of it?
Zoomusicologist Hollis Taylor recently completed a PhD on the musicality of pied butcherbirds. She defines their motifs and songs as ‘sonic heirlooms’, learned from parents and others. She describes how, thorough mimicry and invention, their music continues as a vibrant progressive culture. It has its own aesthetics. 

Taylor, a successful classical violinist, describes months spent listening, recording and analysing pied butcherbirds songs in Western Australia. They have a keen interest in song, in composition and in performance. They sing among themselves and train their young to join in. They perform in counterpoint with other species.
They imitate sounds from humans and their machines. In turn, composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Henry Tate, as well as Taylor herself, use their melody lines in their orchestral works.

Taylor concludes that the interest and time spent by these birds ‘exceeds biological necessity’.  I think this might also be true for the honeyeaters here. As I finish writing, that friarbird is nearby, throwing that motif around in the late afternoon like a saxophonist on a Byron street corner.