Well, it is dark and stormy now, a complete contrast to the brightness of the valley this morning. Even though there were a few showers of rain about, the rain did not deminish the brilliance of the valley, mountain and sky colours.
The little Pee Wee bird who recently found my bird bath at the side of the house ventured around to the back of the house in time for breakfast this morning for the first time. Most of the regular gang had eaten and gone, leaving just a few scraps on the feeding table, which seemed to keep this little guy happy.
Today has been dreadfully humid. I spent most of the day with my daughter and her baby boy, Eli. Eli is the most kissable little man, and I would have loved to have held him all day if cuddling him hadn’t made us both feel even hotter.
Quite loud thunder has been rolling and rumbling around us for the last couple of hours, but so far we haven’t had any rain. The severe storm warning issued this afternoon may be relevent to other areas around us, but we haven’t seen a spot of rain. It did go dark earlier than usual though, hence the cliché title of tonight’s post. 😉
And once again, the daylight hours ended with a touch of drama in the sunset sky over Mount Warning. ❤
After quite a while – three weeks? four maybe? I awoke this morning to signs of rain.
Exhibit A – One drenched kookaburra atop a wet glass balustrade –
Exhibit B – Little Hoppy, my butcher bird with one gammy leg, waiting in the dryness of my back veranda for breakfast –
Exhibit C – My yellow and white frangipani, growing close enough to the house to allow me to take a photo without going out into the rain, with tiny beads of moisture captured on the leaves –
Later, baby magpie visited. The rain was light but consistent, and by the looks of the baby’s dry feathers, I think he may have hidden himself away amid tree foliage to escape the unfamiliar (to him) sight of rain –
And finally, Mount Warning. Just kidding. 😉 Actually, there was no sight of the mountain today, it was hidden behind the rainclouds. 🙂
If I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden
So the hinges on your windows would rust and colour
Like the boats pulled up on the sand for the summer
And your sweet clean clothes would go stiff on the line
And there’d be sand in your pockets and nothing on your mind ~ Josh Pyke.
Summer wasn’t shy today about letting us know it had arrived. At 31°C and 88 percent humidity, it felt like the middle of summer and not the first day. Tomorrow’s prediction is for 35°C (95°F).
Regardless of the weather, I had a very special visitor today, my daughter Emma and her three-and-a-half month old son, Eli. Today, Emma turned 28. I apologise profusely every year for having her at such a hot time of year, which also happens to be the month of Christmas so her birthday can easily be overshadowed by another significant event. This birthday though, as Emma is now a mother herself and realises the futility of my tongue-in-cheek comment, we agreed that babies usually arrive on the day of their choice.
After Emma and Eli headed home, I spent some time Christmas gift shopping online. Even though Australia is travelling incredibly well Covid-wise, I’m still a bit of a scaredy-cat about spending time in crowds. Perhaps more to the point, it saves me time to shop online when I’m still sorting, cleaning, tidying and decluttering my house.
Maggie in a Tizz.
During the afternoon I heard a commotion out in the front garden. Noisy Miner birds – who are named “noisy” for a reason! – were kicking up a ruckus in the tree at the top of our garden, their squawks intermittently interrupted by the sound of a distressed Magpie.
I tried to ignore the noise, but it got the better of me. Even the two dogs sprawled out beside me got up and peered out the door, as if investigating the situation. The dogs know, just as I do, that magpies and miners are friends. If a miner carries on a treat as they were doing today, there’s a threat. I imagined one of the neighbours cats may be lurking around the tree.
Ignoring the noise wasn’t working for me, so I ignored the heat instead, and trudged to the top of the hill to investigate. Whatever the threat was, it seemed to be in the tree, which meant it could be a snake wrapped around a high branch sheltering from the heat of the day.
This is what I found –
A Pee Wee!
We occasionally see Magpie Larks in the garden, and I have noticed recently we have one dropping into the back garden each morning after the other birds have finished eating the food I give them. Magpie Larks are another native Australian bird, affectionately known as Pee Wees. They have a very pretty song and seem completely harmless, so goodness knows why the magpies objected so much to the visit. Maybe the magpie family feel that they “own” my yard, and the tree being in our yard belongs to them.
Satisfied that one tiny pee wee posed no threat to my lovely magpie family, I paused to take a photo of Mount Warning, which could be seen today, although not as clearly visible as it could be (first photo).
Later tonight at around sunset, I took another photo of the mountain. Dark patches of cloud had rolled in, and we didn’t see the beautiful orange sunset sky we have had lately.
The opening words of today’s post are song lyrics from Josh Pyke, an Australian singer, whose creativity with words conjures images of immense beauty when describing the most mundane moments of everyday life. This song is called The Summer, so very appropriate for today. I love this song as the words romanticise the one season of the year that I struggle to cope with. For anyone interested, here’s the rest of the lyrics to The Summer ~
But every year it gets a little bit harder
To get back to the feeling of when we were fifteen
And we could jump in the river upstream
And let the current carry us to the beginning where
The river met the sea again
And all our days were a sun-drenched haze
While the salt spray crusted on the window panes
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
And I’ll remember that summer as the right one
The storms made the pavement steam like a kettle
And our first goodbye always seemed like hours
In the car park in between my house and yours
And if the summer holds a song we might sing forever
The winter holds a bite we’d never felt before
But time is like the ocean
You can only hold a little in your hands
So we swim before we’re broken
Before our bones become
Black coral on the sand
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
So if I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden ~ Josh Pyke.
Where I live on the coast we’ve been lucky. Our maximum temperatures have remained, on average, around the low thirties (or the high eighties if you go by the Fahrenheit scale). It’s the high humidity of our sub-tropical climate that has really knocked us about though.
A bad hair day.
Right through summer I’ve been refreshing the water bowls every morning that I leave strategically placed where my beautiful feathered visitors will find them. I worry about the birds constantly, wondering whether I’d lose any of my regulars, but most of them continue to show up every day.
It’s a relief knowing the worst of the heat is behind us. Last night we had quite a bit of rain and this morning the air felt cool, fresh and still. My resident kookaburras came to visit, singing their raucous territorial song in my front garden, and in the distance I could hear another flock of kookies staking a claim on their territory in reply.
Learning to trust.
It’s been a few weeks now since my original, Larry, visited and I miss seeing him. His lady friend, Shilo, who would once hide behind Larry, peeking out to see if I’d noticed her, visits still with the rest of the flock. But I’ve noticed a change in her manner. She flies down to sit close to me when I feed the others. And when I pass her food, her super-timidness has been replaced by a confident gesture – by Shilo’s standards at least – she now grabs food from my hand before joining the others.
Larry. Photo taken December 2018.
She’s not as gentle as Larry. Larry had a confident air, a steadiness of eye that I’ve never noticed in any other bird. I could pass the tiniest morsel to him and he’d peck it gently from between my fingers. But Shilo wouldn’t dream of allowing me to hand-feed her when Larry was around.
I wish Shilo could tell me what has become of Larry. My fearless friend has been visiting for over ten years, and given the lifespan of a kookaburra is around 11-15 years, maybe Larry didn’t make it through the heat of the summer. I prefer not to think about that possibility though. Kookaburras mate for life, so what is Shilo to do now?
A new addition to the clan.
Thankfully, Larry and Shilo’s clan has grown in numbers over the years. Now, every afternoon when they visit, I do a head-count. I have seven regulars visiting. Hopefully some of the younger birds are noticing the trust Shilo has in me. Perhaps in her timid way, Shilo is doing the same as Larry, by setting an example of trust.
Maybe over time, the youngsters will learn to trust me too.
Postscript:I have to wonder, are birds psychic? Three hours after writing this post I went outside to feed the kookaburras, just as I do every afternoon. Today, as I approached a kookaburra waiting in Shilo’s usual place, another bird flew down … the waiting bird was Larry, and Shilo sat beside him. As usual, she took her food, then joined the others. Larry stayed, gently taking each small piece of meat from my hand as I passed it to him.
I wonder where he’s been? He looked fantastic! Clean, bright eyed, and as calm as ever. 🙂
In My World 