With fewer than 400 regents left in the wild, researchers feared there simply weren’t enough mature regents left to teach younger males how to sing their way into a would-be mate’s heart.

Taronga Zoo behavioural ecologist Dr Ben Pitcher said when the conservation breeding program began almost 20 years ago, young birds who had yet to learn their songs were brought from the wild into captivity.

In the early days, keepers recorded wild regents’ songs, and put cassette tape recordings of birdsong in captive birds’ aviaries. Later, they put microphones into aviaries with adult birds, and speakers in the juvenile birds’ aviaries.

“A few years ago we did a study of the success of the birds that we bred in the zoo and released out, and we found that one of the big predictors of success for the birds was whether they had been tutored [in birdsong] or not,” Pitcher said.

“If they had a better song when they were released, they were more likely to go on to be successful in the wild. And we put that down to probably forming up flocks with the other regent honeyeaters, and also the opportunity to find a mate.”

Taronga Zoo redoubled its efforts, partnering with the Australian National University to find the most effective way to teach birds their full-length and complex songs. They discovered “live tutors” – wild-born birds who still sang an intact song – were the best teachers.

“And thanks to all that effort in the last season or two, we’ve really had some great successes in terms of the zoo-bred birds recovering that wild song and singing correctly, and so we can now put them back into the wild,” Pitcher said.

As spotted gums flower across the east coast of Australia this winter (they flower every few years), they are creating irresistible conditions for regents – and birdwatchers.

BirdLife Australia’s woodland birds team and citizen scientists have been busy recording sightings.

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“Regent honeyeaters are extremely mobile, but they’re also very fussy,” Roderick said.

“They have their favourite trees, just like koalas have their favourite trees, and that’s probably been their undoing because when you lose 90 per cent of your habitat, and you’re still roaming the countryside, turning your nose up at other blossom that’s available ... it’s a high-risk lifestyle.”

Dr Ross Crates, from Australian National University, sounded a note of caution about whether captive-born regents were recovering their songs after release to the wild.

Crates, who co-authored the research showing regent honeyeaters were adopting the songs of other bird species, said there was no evidence from many years of observations in the zoo that regent honeyeaters could drastically change their songs once they were more than a year old.

“Most songbirds are what we call ‘close-ended learners’, which means their adult songs are pretty much fixed by the time they are a year old,” he said.

“As far as I am aware there are only one or two observations in the wild of zoo-bred birds making vocalisations that somewhat resemble those of wild birds.

“I’m not saying its impossible that zoo birds can’t learn wild songs after they are released, just that currently the evidence is at best anecdotal. Our research over coming years will shed more light on this.”

If you see a regent honeyeater in the wild, contact BirdLife Australia.