Posting this to share with students interested in The Hunger Games, which features birds genetically engineered to act as spies.

Many birds can mimic sounds but lyrebirds are the masters. They are nature’s living tape recorders, and sometimes their songs can be troubling.

For example, when the BBC’s David Attenborough ran into a lyrebird deep in the Australian woods, the bird not only sang the songs of 20 other forest birds, it also did a perfect imitation of foresters and their chainsaws, who apparently were getting closer. That same bird made the sound of a car alarm. —NPR.org » Natures Living Tape Recorders May Be Telling Us Secrets.