Pied Butcherbird

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.

Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the virtuoso songster the pied butcherbird of Australia. Australian parks, gardens resonate to the flute like calls of a medium sized black and white bird with stout blue-grey bills, and a black hood. They earned their name 'butcherbird' from their habit of storing prey by impaling it onto thorns or in a tree crevice before feeding on it with their hooked bill. They can sing for up to twenty minutes at a time, appearing to improvise as they perform a mellifluous, but unpredictable performance which they deliver as a solo or a duet with another butcherbird. Australian composer David Lumsdaine, described its call as..... "a virtuoso of composition and improvisation".