Bird

 

Here at Wye River time may include birdwatching on the iPhone. ‘Superb blue wren’ opens the list in Notes, keeping in mind at all times the female, who is more superb brown wren. They bob up from the bracken below, in hope of seed. How they move from place to place in seconds is an optical marvel, ditto how they land on a railing from the decking in a trice. Not surprisingly, soon to show up amidst the tall timber of the steep slope is Item: ‘Sulphur-crested cockatoo’. Several in fact, they glide in packs, cocking their headdress towards an eighth of apple, or the vicinity in general in proprietorial air. Their stride is wide, but they’ll POQ if there’s a better offer up the valley. Pleasingly, ‘Kookaburra’ can be added to the list, usually heard before seen but this time silent swooping to the decking from powerlines. They grab a curl of orange peel and bash it against the timber like a snake, before seeing it’s not what they thought it was. Their bearing is calm, superior. They bide their time, as you do when in charge. Likewise disposed is ‘Magpie’, glancing from side to side, smart as. Today is thin pickings in wintry Wye, what with the residents up in Town or staying inside out of the cold. Exit with a brief warble, back another day. Happily the name ‘King parrot’ is added to the list in the iPhone, as they descend brightly in greens and reds from the forests of the hinterland. Shyer when young, they hold back from taking strawberry tops from our hands. Gathering about the decking table they bicker one another for a choice slice. If the day is sunny we walk down to the store and the beach: ‘Seagull’. On the way downhill the restored gardens of native coastal bushes twitch with, quick note in Notes: ‘Firetail’. Maybe a dozen of them darting up the ladders of banksias. At the river itself construction is underway on a new bridge, hence the stop-start of one lane traffic and grind of truck machinery grating against the familiar regularity of the surf waves. ‘Heron’ keeps its distance upriver amidst bulrushes and overhang. Birds that could only be ‘Cormorant’ grace the outlines of branch and reef. After chai at the store and inspection of the beach, time may include walking the long way home with the reassuring, some would say inevitable, appearance in air-bending numbers of: ‘Crimson rosella’. Headlong they weave between eucalypts, screech with what we always assume is happiness, to land up at the decking later in time for the funtime morsels. Then, when least expected, the moment: ‘Satin bowerbird’. Mrs Green more commonly than Mr Blue, but all the same we report the news back down the line in a soft voice. Shy as, but watching all the time, they reconnoitre just outside the edges of vision, grabbing the grape under the radar. The iPhone list includes sightings passed on to the scribe. For example, “one that seemed to have a beard,” which flipping through The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds’ (Revised and update edition) we adduce to be a New Holland Honeyeater. “One with a yellow belly” requires more information, though on subsequent walks we conclude, after several sightings, it was ‘Wattlebird’. “A grey bird with a very long neck” is noted for future reference, and good luck with that! “A bird with a beak that goes chisssssssss” is recorded, the sound there described in the air by our reporter as protruding some distance from the head. Sightings later confirm it is: ‘Egret’. ‘Duck’ is another river bird, duly noted. Night follows day like some great &c. Variations on these sightings displace the notion of repetition, birdland being cyclic. Still, reports drift in for the iPhone: “A great seabird that is all black and bulbous and follows the line where the sand meets the ocean.” Over a fresh pot of chai we agree: ‘Great cormorant’. Sent from my iPhone.

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.

Bird

 The Magpies are set to win again this year. This is not another example of the delusional preoccupations of our times, the abject resilience of the Collingwood mind indifferent to any signs to the contrary. Not black-and-white denialism. Today they already have 730 votes in Australian [Bird] of the Year Poll, second behind the Gang-Gang Cockatoos on 801, which is a nice place to be. Pied Currawongs and Spotted Pardalotes are in the two hundreds, so still in there with a chance. I have until 7^th October to choose between forty-nine others, or else help the Magpies over the line.

Bird

Warm for December but cool in their down

Birds, shape of riverbend, take the boardwalk.

In a grove of young eucalypts birds are soft wind

Move through foliage to steep banks beyond.

Most noticeable birds feed on what’s about grass,

Scoot in and out of their set-up amidst rushes.

Sounds sharp as sunlight accommodate the air

Hop from stem to stem, trip across the sky.

Interruption to meditation is the machine,

It jars starts alive with its death noise

Constant anomaly till its job ends shut.

Silence does not silence birds’ re-entry,

The clock passes an hour where they frolic,

Pack their things, watch humans, or go upstream.

Bird (December)

Photograph of a bird handmade by Mirka Mora, Heide Gallery down the road, 

taken by Carol O'Connor

 
Doubtless we have a bird in the hand, here. But what kind of bird? I sometimes wonder if Mirka ever cared to work from nature, much. Or, just to get the gist. On page 86 of ‘Love and Clutter’ she confesses of a favourite bird book, “it makes me cry. Love is hiding in birds’ names: pratincole, swallow-plover, sea curlew, whimbrel, sandpiper, godwit, tattler, stint, knot, hooded dotterel, and many more.” We get the sense this December exhibit might be one of them and that love is hiding in its name. Her bird is well-fed, unusually feathered, alive with imagination.

Bird (March)

[Abstract] This shape, so immediately a bird, though we may call the shape something else, a blur or grace, prompts us to ask if we are formed to hunt the shape, identify the shape for our own protection, name the shape to put the shape in its place thus making ourselves feel clever. This so obviously bird has sky and trees, it’s one of us we could say, though ‘March’ the title of this abstract seems enigmatic. The March of Time? The Italian Marches? The month in-between? We will never explain away their bright eye, patterned feathers, little eggs, lift-off…