Chattest

 

Epiphany begins early for the dozens of lorikeets and honeyeaters breakfasting loudly in the top outcrops of our flowering gumtree. The colour of the flowers is red-orange, a colour currently not available as an option in any pencil box or paint set. Microsoft Paint is pitifully unprepared for this version of red. Lorikeets screech, whistle, chat and chatter, leading at times to the communication known as chattest. Chattest is very long and loud, making all other thought impossible for anyone in close proximity, all lorikeets in the area engaging in chattest simultaneously. Honeyeaters, demure even by contrast, keep to lower branches, or else bide their time until the lorikeet storm has passed, which won’t be any time until they have had their fill of pollen and nectar. Our nearby plum tree is netted, like a white cloud, to save the satsuma plums for the humans. The photograph appended demonstrates how difficult it is for a camera to distinguish tree from birds. Their bodies are dark green as the leaves yet banded with light green, again like the leaves, such that they may be a leaf, or even a flower, if there are any left. Flowers, because beaks and undersides of wings are the same red-orange as the gum-flowers upon which they breakfast louder than any breakfast radio host, a coincidence of colour that would make even a Charles Darwin sit up and take notice. Their heads, furthermore, are the strong blue associated with the summer sky, especially the summer sky as seen as triangles and other geometric forms through leaves of a flowering gum on the morning of Epiphany. Already the day is opening up in ways familiar to many of us. Honeyeaters, not birds we normally think of as demure, arrive in the flowering gum as gradually lorikeets reduce their chatter to a chat and as gradually, dash colourfully away in twos and threes. The strings of LED-light microstars will soon be unlaced from the Christmas Tree, thence to be coiled into their box and returned to a top ledge until next Advent. Angels, donkeys, shepherds and the like will be unpinned from tips of branches, thence placed carefully in their own Chinese lacquer box until next time this year. And the tree itself will be unbolted from its boy scout base, to meet its end on the nature strip or, more likely, the green waste bin. Christmas cards will be taken down, re-read, notes made about senders who have left special hints in their cards, then stacked in a shoebox until such time as a decision is made about what to do with the outcomes of this friendly convention. Already the day is warming up, with a prediction of 31C, which is 87 in the old language, so not a scorcher but best to keep in the shade. It pays to get out early and come in early.