It’s a wonder I don’t spend half my time flat on my face simply because I’ve tripped over something while peering into tree canopies with my binoculars. Having invested last year in some magnificent Steiners, an entire new world is at my finger tips and I rarely go around the billabong without them. And if I forget, you can be certain that a new bird will appear and I’m left cursing my stupidity.
So today, we are re-aligning part of the landscape outside the kitchen area. I might add, Bill is doing most of the work of course. I am far too occupied with .. yes, you got it .. a bird! Right above our heads, oblivious to both of us, is a young Crested Shrike-tit nagging its parent for tidbits .. and poor said parent is digging away under bark strips, yanking off more lumps of bark, and raiding the larder that is our spectacular Eucalyptus mannifera right outside the house.
I’m enthralled of course. These birds seem to reappear at Wombat Bend only around late summer, yet all the bird books say they are resident, don’t travel much, and are in general widespread up the eastern freeboard. Whatever the reason, they really do only appear in our neck of the woods about now.
They raid this particular tree like it’s been on their wish list for a year. Every branch, every bit of its multiple trunks, every twig and stem, is meticulously examined and cleaned of edibles. The baby is keeping up a persistent cheepcheepcheep and tagging mum like a bad smell. The parent has a massively powerful bill and I can hear the wood screeching as it gets torn apart… and whatever is hiding underneath is, unfortunately, consigned to baby food.
They’ll probably stay for a few more days then off they’ll go, and I’m left wondering how it is we don’t see them for another year.
Meanwhile Bill has finished another section of the landscape, and my wonderful binoculars have again proved their worth & weight in gold.
Images: Stewart Monckton, birdsaspoetry