birding my time

The Bird Flies Away
unsigned lithograph by Joan Míro (1952)

I spend a lot of time out of the house. It's not that I'm an outdoors person, just a heavy smoker who doesn't smoke inside. Haven't done for at least 15 years now, fortunate that both the house in Sydney & the house here have had large front porches & covered areas at the back.

I excuse myself on the grounds that I need a break from the computer, or I need contemplation time. But that's crap. The truth is that I've always smoked when I wrote or worked at a desk, was renowned for having up to three half-smoked cigarettes burning away in the ashtray at the same time. Plus another one in my mouth. I used to go through 60 a day, now I'm down to about 20 thanks to smokefree homes, offices, restaurants, etc. But a relevant epitaph for me will be "He wrote, he smoked."

Where I smoke here — upstairs, downstairs — depends on time of day, wind direction, where I am & what I'm doing in the house, whether there's a lot of sun, too much, or not enough. So yesterday afternoon, after lunch, I was out the front when my "contemplation" was disturbed by the noise of a couple of magpie larks. They've thin reedy voices, totally unmelodic, the avian equivalent of yapping dogs, & this time they were at high pitch. Looked up to see them giving a kookaburra shit, possibly some territorial thing or maybe they just don't like kookaburras.

The kookaburra was at first unmoved; but then other birds started arriving, attracted by the clamor of the magpie larks. Noisy miners — the name says it all; no redeeming features, extremely territorial birds, well-known for driving other native species away — arrived, about 16 of them. & then half a dozen or so blue-eyed olive-backed orioles — features as above — came to join the party.

So there's this treeful of birds, all but one of them shrieking their heads off. Jumping from branch to branch, circling around, getting close to, above, below, the kookaburra. It remained stoic, moved its head around to see what the hell was going on, then went back to staring into space.

Five minutes of this, full on. Then the noisy miners moved off in 16 different directions, followed a minute or so later by the orioles which tended to stick together. The magpie larks kept on yammering for another couple of minutes, then they too grew tired of it all & moved away.

Leaving the kookaburra, still unfazed by it all. It took a look around to make sure everything else had left, & you could almost see a grin come to its face & the fuck you lot thought pass through its mind. Talk about attitude.

So now I know where the phrase "giving someone the bird" comes from......even if they don't have fingers.