Bird

 

In Wye River before Christmas, I sit at the picture windows re-reading ‘The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon’. My eye revisits Entry no. 28: Birds. Looking up on Saturday I watch from the same windows the flight of a sulphur-crested cockatoo over the river, backdrop the sea. Its plumage is pure white as the wave crests. In the evening, kookaburras chortle from the park. They will ‘laugh’ at unexpected times, not just at daybreak: heartening surprise. Next day blue fairy wrens dart onto the decking. Their waltzing is like fidgeting, then they skedaddle. At sunset, a small flock of currawongs fly across the ridge towards night home. One has food in its beak,  but what is it? Monday, a magpie lands and stands on a nearby roof. Its head strikes the classical heroic pose renowned of magpies, counterpoint to the neighbour’s abstract off-centre antenna. Garden birds, unidentifiable, swim through dusk air catching midges in the fading heat. On Tuesday Bridie sees a large bird on a low branch above the river. Binoculars improve things, but we cannot agree if it’s an egret or heron, or petrel even. The beak is orange, neck is too short, it’s more black than white. Answers hang in the air, but when we magnify the lenses again, the bird has flown. Next day discussion continues about petrels, their likeness to shearwaters, their relative size. We watch petrels from the safety of the car, as we drive into Apollo Bay for lunch. Out from the clifftops they ride on the thermals, backdrop the sea, magnificent and defiant. Wednesday is the first occasion this week we sight king parrots. Their glossy green plumage and orange heads are most familiar up at the house. Perhaps weeks of rain have kept them inland. Crimson rosellas inspect a woodheap: charming. Later they inspect our decking for seeds and crumbs. A flock flying through the trees at full speed is an event. BoM said it would rain on Thursday and here it is, raining on Thursday. Later in the morning rain clears and I continue reading Sei Shōnagon above the gully, its expansive view of inlet and sea, outside at the back of the house. Rosellas. Thrushes. Wattlebirds. Cockatoos. They come and go in their own ways. At tea time we observe birds flying down to eat seed scattered on the decking table. Bridie and I agree that rosellas are polite eaters, while cockatoos are garrulous. I notice on the last day of our stay how conspicuous by their absence are satin bowerbirds. Perhaps scrub clearances have forced them over to Separation Creek. Is that likely? Also, firetails, I haven’t seen any firetails for a while, wishing the finches hopping on a distant branch were such. We laugh at the friendly whistle of the rosella pecking at its breakfast. Cute, we call the whistle, but what does cute mean? It seems a synonym for lovely, or companionable. Sweet, as the Italians say, and Fitzroy baristas.