Up in the Clouds.

Drizzling rain has hung around on and off during the past couple of weeks here, and as it turned out, the drizzle was simply a rehearsal for the main performance. The unannounced showtime took place yesterday with a number of bedraggled birds taking their seats in the front row.

You may remember the view of a gentle sunset over Mount Warning that I showed you a couple of weeks ago, a “Wordless Wednesday” post. To fully appreciate the amount of cloud surrounding my home yesterday, take a quick look at the contrasting view in the link, to the one above….

Way down the back garden I noticed a kookaburra, sitting in the bare branches of the pecan nut tree.

The wet kookaburra in the distance turned out to be a cold Larry, who waited patiently while I took photos of him, fluffing up his feathers to look his best, before flying to the veranda for his breakfast. He’s been visiting me for so long now, and seems to know the routine ~ food for a photo.

At nesting time, many of the old regulars return to the area, including a family of Currawongs. They are timid birds, watch the veranda from a distance, and fly away to the safety of a far away tree if I venture outdoors when they are in the garden.

My regulars, a pair of magpies, are nesting nearby right now, just as they have done for the last few years. I can hand feed these two, and I suspect that I may have known them when they were tiny babies, brought to my garden by their parents, for a safe haven and an easy feed, between lessons on worm-catching.

Never far from the magpies are a flock of Noisy Miners. Watching the various birds flitting around my garden over the years has taught me that Noisy Miners are the protectors of the Magpie Family. I always know where to find one of my cats in the garden, as that’s where the miners will be kicking up a ruckus. And during summer, when we have Channel Billed Cuckoos in the area (they fly over to Australia from Papua New Guinea about mid spring,) the Noisy Miners help the Magpies attack the Cuckoos. It’s such a sad sight, knowing that the cuckoos, if they manage to get to the nests of the Magpies and Currawongs, will remove the eggs and newly hatched baby birds from the nests and lay their own eggs. We found three dead, featherless baby birds around our garden last year, and as a result we had no baby magpies in our area. That’s the sad side of nature. 😦

I had to go out shopping during the morning, regardless of the weather, and I left my home amid the rain absolutely bucketing it down! We are having a baby shower here on Saturday morning, and thankfully the weather forecast is looking a tad more promising for today and tomorrow, cloudy, with patches of sunshine. So far, the forecast is accurate.

I love the expressions on the faces of the Noisy Miners! Even on a beautiful sunny day, they have the most forlorn little faces. I watched this little fellow, above, for some time, as he ducked under the shelter of large leaves, stayed there momentarily, then ducked back out again. I wondered, did he expect the rain to suddenly stop?

As I mentioned before, we are having a baby shower here on Saturday morning, so today I am spending some time pre-preparing food for the party. In case you missed the news, my first grand-baby is due in November, and my soon to be daughter-in-law is now over her morning sickness, looking beautiful, and becoming more excited every day by all of the upcoming events. First of all the baby shower, the wedding in September, and the baby due in November, it’s a very exciting year for both families. 🙂

And for an update on our baby, I hope that Mary won’t mind that I “stole” a lovely photo of her that she posted on Facebook which she told me her sister had taken one day when they drove down to Murwillumbah, one fine-weather day. Mary is standing near some sugar cane fields, looking very pregnant and just lovely.

Happy days, filled with blessings. ❤