As with lyrebirds, scrubwrens are birds of rainforests and moist eucalypt gullies. They’re usually pretty shy and unobtrusive little creatures but they have a sassy character and provided you are willing to sit quietly in their domain it’s not uncommon for them to cautiously hop all around you (especially if you stir up a section of leaf debris on the forest floor before you sit down).
In early Spring, male scrubwrens begin using mimicry as part of their marketing strategy to attract a female, or perhaps to re-affirm an existing relationship (most songbirds are monogamous, but may not necessarily have life-long mates). Their mimicry is much faster and less accurate than that of lyrebirds, chopping between super-short sound snippets of a range of calls from other local songbirds (usually small birds).
In the audio recording of a male scrubwren near my house you can hear mimicry of birds like Australian logrunner, satin bowerbird, Lewin’s honeyeater grey shrike-thrush, and even the churring of an owlet nightjar.