This album highlights iconic voices among Australia's songbirds, each in 10 minute feature tracks with a supporting cast of bush birdsong.

A family of Laughing Kookaburras throw back their heads, Magpies carol in the morning sunlight, and a pair of Pied Butcherbirds give a sublime performance of synchronised duetting. In cooler forests, we hear the extraordinary mimicry of the Lyrebird on its display mound, and a forest ringing with the tinkling of Bell Miners (Bellbirds). We conclude with the acrobatic and beautiful song of the Rufous Whistler.

Visitors from overseas and locals alike notice that Australia has some extraordinary birdsong. Underlying this are behaviours and vocal strategies uniquely developed in antipodean birds. For instance, colonies of Bell Miners use their voices to create a kind of sonic exclusion zone, dissuading other species from entering their patch of forest. Magpies are highly intelligent birds whose vocalisations facilitate their complex social lives. Kookaburras are co-operative breeders that chorus together as a family. Lyrebirds use mimicry as the basis for a spectacular display which shapes their entire breeding biology. And the duetting songs of Pied Butcherbirds display an aesthetic sensibility through which they bond closely as a breeding pair.

This album features some of these standout species - each a feathered virtuoso.

It concludes with a bonus track in which you walk down to an ocean beach through teatree and coastal scrub, where the songs of Wattlebirds and Silvereys are heard with the approaching surf.