One of the joys of the place I call home is the African tulip tree right outside our balcony. Scientifically, in case you're scratching your chin and wondering, that's Spathodea campanulata. At this time of the year, it is awash with those African tulips, bright red/orange beauties. From certain angles, they resemble bells, which accounts for the campanulata - Latin for "bell-shaped".

But as pretty as the flowers are, I'm not much of a tree guy. What I love instead about the tree is that it attracts birds. As I write these words, there are actually three crows' nests on the tree, with watchful crow couples near each.

How watchful? Twice already, one crow from the nearest nest has dive-bombed me as I stood on the balcony.

No, pal, your nest is just that bit too far for me to reach out and grab what's inside. Or evict what's inside - which important job I will leave for some friendly neighbourhood koel, or cuckoo. It's what's known as a "brood parasite", meaning it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds - crows, in particular. And when an egg hatches, the crow parents diligently feed the koel chick along with their own. That is, until the larger koel chick pushes the smaller baby crows out of the nest.

I mean, it has got to be one of the great conundrums of the bird world. How does an obviously intelligent bird, the crow, get so easily fooled by the opportunist koel?

Well, this is an instance of something the bird world is simply awash in: mimicry. In this case, the koel's egg mimics the crow's, and later the same happens with the chicks. The mimicry is good enough that mama and papa crow have no idea they are raising an impostor who even evicts their own progeny.

You usually alert readers will remember that I took an ornithology course earlier this year. There was much to savour in it, including, of all things, a detailed discourse on statistics. (I assure you that was savoury.) But perhaps most savoury of all was the way birds indulge in mimicry. Like the koel above.

Or in Africa's Kalahari Desert, there's the fork-tailed drongo. This jet-black bird is an expert at stealing food from other animals. It is able to do this because it is also an expert mimic. For example, a drongo will turn up near a meerkat that is about to consume some food, and mimics the alarm call meerkats make when faced with a predator. Spooked, the hungry meerkat runs for cover. The fork-tailed drongo helps itself to the food. This slick deception to take the meerkat's lunch is known as "stealth kleptoparasitism".

But my favourite act of bird mimicry, by a distance, happens in Australia. In one of the lectures in the course, we learned about the mating habits of the superb lyrebird. To begin with, you need to know that that "superb" is not my adjective, but actually part of its name - though if you're scientifically inclined, you can instead call it Menura novaehollandiae. Whichever you choose, the male of this Australian species has a long tail that's often put to good use, and a talent at mimicry that's put to even better use.

When it comes to mating, these lyrebirds are a notably promiscuous species - both males and females indulge themselves with multiple partners. What this has resulted in, evolutionarily speaking, is that the males go through elaborate, complex mating rituals to attract and keep - remember that word "keep" - females.

A 2021 paper explores this in charming detail. It starts by observing that "Darwin argued that females' 'taste for the beautiful' drives the evolution of male extravagance" - and I imagine that remark strikes the chord with some of you that it does with me. But this paper is about a different motivator of such extravagance: "sexual selection theory also predicts that extravagant ornaments can arise from sexual conflict and deception."

Deception, again.

In breeding season, a male lyrebird builds and defends several "display mounds".

He uses these as platforms for a truly virtuoso performance - singing, fanning and vibrating his tail, strutting about. His aim, of course, is to attract a female to one of these arenas for ... well, for what females and males of the species tend to do, sexually. The female lyrebirds scout out the performing males and make their choices.

But when a female chooses a male and they form a pair, the male turns to his own slick "deceptive mimicry to manipulate the [female] into mating." He "create[s] an elaborate acoustic illusion of a mixed-species mobbing flock". That is, he deceives his lady friend into thinking there's a loud, raucous mob out there, gathered to harass and ward off predators. Such flocks, the scientists write, "are reliable cues of the presence of a predator, yet would seem impervious to imitation by a single individual."

Yet that's how superb a mimic the lyrebird is: "Acoustic analysis showed that males mimicked the mobbing alarm calls of multiple species calling together, enhancing the illusion by also vocally imitating the wingbeats of small birds."

Expert this is, but why this elaborate act? The male wants to dissuade the lady from leaving. He wants to keep - remember that word? - her on his display mound as long as possible. He wants to prolong ... well, what females and males of the species do, sexually. And in fact, superb lyrebirds copulate for an unusually long time, "suggesting that the mimicry aims to prevent females from prematurely terminating these crucial sexual interactions." (Male lyrebirds create a complex acoustic illusion of a mobbing flock during courtship and copulation, Anastasia H Dalziell and others, Current Biology, 10 May 2021 - an academic paper, but how much delight it packs in!)

Learning all this, you might naturally wonder - why does the female get deceived at all? For even if she's otherwise occupied, surely she can simply look out from the display mound and see that there's no mobbing flock out there? Ah, but the male has his tail, you see. During this mating ritual, he drapes it and other feathers over the female, so she cannot look out. So she believes her deceitful mate. She stays on the mound, playing her part for that "unusually long time." (See one of these lyrebird pairs doing their lovely ritual here - also from the paper.)

The whole thing leaves me utterly charmed. And certainly we must not anthropomorphize ... but certainly too, I can't be the only human who reads about the superb lyrebird and is left wondering.