Birds
The Laughing Kookaburra. Usually seen in a family group, who knows what’s happened to the rest of them. S/he sits on the post in the garden, surveying the landscape and lets me take a few pictures. With winter coming I have some food ready for them, just enough to keep going. We’ll see … Proud thing.
The Butcher Bird, a youngster. Comes with mum and dad who sing their melodious song, and so I give them a bite to eat. It’s always a pleasure to engage with them, to say hello. Everyone communicating in their way. They come and they go without attachment.
Eastern Curlew. Crazy Curlew. Well, they do give that impression at times but nothing in the wild is crazy. That epithet is rightly reserved for Man, describing an unnatural condition on the way out and then a season to pass through on the way home again. It’s all quite natural, for Man.
Curlew again, because I like it so much. They have no self-consciousness, just do what they do and move on, to do what they do. Driven by instinct, especially for food and shelter now that winter is coming. But wherever there is engagement with the wild life there is a communication, in some sense.
House Martins, or Swifts, they make their nests under the jetty at Victoria Point. Too fast for an in flight shot and the only time they stop still is when the wind is up. And so it was, a howling wind made captive subjects. Captured by nature, their own nature. Aren’t we all … Until we’re not.
Now what does that mean … But anyway, little darlings, aren’t they.
Honey eater, female I think. They life a bit of fruit too.
The one that got away, the lost picture. A pelican in flight overhead. Just got the one shot, not bad I think. Let’s see what the new season brings.
Now that summer is over and the supply of food is diminishing the wildlife is getting hungry, not just the birds.
Wallabies, rats, iguanas, everything is feeling the change of season and what it means when you live a wild life.
On the edge, hunger not too sharp yet, competition not so fierce. Though the wildlife do it differently.
Nobody holds on to the past. Whatever is done is done and gone. Every day is a new day.
They have no ‘second’ nature to trouble them. No remembrance of facts interpreted.
Just life as it is here and now.
The wild life.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look …
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The East …
She took position at the bottom of stairway for the day and wouldn’t be discouraged. … Though she kept a metre distance, vocal warning if I got too close.
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The curlew is used to the area, frequently seen exploring at night. … They find an out of the way place to wait out the day. … A little out of place on the stairway though.
I don’t mind, all are welcome, unless they prove to be intrusive – like the ibis recently eating all the seedlings. … But this one likes fish, so no problem there.
… of Bris, the Bush Stone Curlew came visiting. Walking past the bottom of the front stairway and there she was, just standing still.
They are commonly seen here at night darting about in search of … what things we search for at night, food and friends perhaps.
Never has one taken to the garden for the day before. Unlike most other birds these Curlews are nocturnal, and hide away during daylight.
That’s two night birds visiting the house this last week, and the Frogmouth was on the fence as I passed by, at arms length again, untroubled.
The Curlew did enjoy the cats leftover fish though, and even broke its safety space and came within a few inches while I put more food in the bowl – hungry.
If you can make space, and leave well enough alone – inside is out – they will come. The natural creatures, expressions of the will to live, and more.
Representations of the divine. The simple pleasure of knowing nature’s primary sense, a sense of peace.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Butcher Bird …
A windy morning she came to look, and fetch what the possum left behind on the ground. A little feeding in winter goes a long way, to spring.
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Sitting on the rain cap tied on one of the bee hotels. I have seen them take a bee from mid-air as they dove past.
But no bees now, none before late spring rain and heat, November or December, maybe. It all depends …
Hello little one … wary of dropping to the ground for that morsel. But she does, and poses a while.
Hey hey … G’day mate … Thanks for the food, the help, the nourishment …
… so called, for their practise of skewering prey and hanging it up for later.
A youngster, interested in what I’m up to in the undergrowth.
After a bit of food dropped by last night’s possum perhaps.
A little pleasure, to have animated nature visit so.
And then she’s gone, that’s wild life, in sense.
No judgement, allows the next event to be.
Without prejudice …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Kooky …
She? appeared suddenly and waited for me to get back with the camera, as if I was one of the family. See the hitchiker behind the eye?
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The youngster maybe, centre of the garden, between the adults. Learning the ways of the world, a hunting.
The other side, the other parent, teacher and provider. How we are … until death us do part.
Sharp eyed hunter, bright vision in blazing sun or deep shadow … the king of kingfishers is our Kookaburra.
It’s a lovely time of year, the hot summer’s over and a warm wet autumn has begun.
I was taking dead heads from the yellow rose bush out back near the fence when I heard a sound close by.
I didn’t recognise it and thought nothing of it until a big kookaburra appeared just above my head, about three feet away.
It must have been around two feet long, tip to tail, and that beak … a deadly serious hunting tool, to the gardens small creatures.
It wasn’t at all wary of me, probably somewhat used to people given it lives in the suburbs and probably gets fed on occasion.
Then I heard a soft kooky cry from behind me and there was the youngster, or was it the mamma. I don’t know …
And then there were three. One casting around for sign of live food, a movement in the shadows, a flicker of give-away light.
One sitting on top of the clothes line, or watsitcalled. And the other diving towards the far fence to sit high for the outlook.
But no, nothing to be had in my backyard this hour of this day. I ran up and got the camera …
… and some grain bread, but no interest from the family. Their need being for fresh meat.
And I didn’t have any to give … but they let me take a few pix from close by.
A simple pleasure, unhurried.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Kooki Kool
Recently a family of Kookaburra’s moved into the neighbourhood, maybe driven by the extraordinary weather and lack of food in their usual habitat. There have been so few insects in the local wild places, as I noted in other posts.
At first they were laughing a lot, as Kooki’s do, and hanging out for a feed. Wherever I went in the garden there they would be, looking at me, sometimes laughing, sometimes ‘asking’ for food – in their way. One day all three came to the balcony and sat for a few pictures, a pleasure for me.
Fresh meat is their thing and with no insects it was mince from my dear and generous neighbour’s fridge, of course I paid my share. Then, after a while, they settled into the area and didn’t ask for food so much. I think they must have found someone nearby to feed them regularly, good for them.
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There is something magical about birds. In the fact of things, wherever you go there you will find a bird. They are everywhere and they see everything, at least more than anything else on the planet. I believe they are known in various cultures as the messengers of the Gods and I can see why, amongst all the creatures they so obviously fly. Magical indeed.
It’s not just in the fact of things that they are respected and even revered, for their form and function, colour and song, their beauty. But in the truth of things, what is behind the fact, they are the ‘messages’ of the Gods. Their forms – of fact – the bringers of that message.
When it happens to you, you will know what the message is, because it is already in you. The sound and sight of a bird will point to it. The thing is not to ignore it since it is from the ‘gods’ and serves the greater purpose of life on earth.
To wake up, to the being of a sunbeam, from the dream of past and future that is the human mind today.
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Walking in the woods the last few days I have been touched by many of our little friends, some yellow backs flashing as they passed swiftly by, some crimson heads bobbing around the bush in front, the royal blue of the long tailed tit, and such high pitched songs that were often bordering on the range of hearing, and all the usual characters heard and sighted in the shadows of the green, coming and going, to me and away.
All in concert, a single song, of the love of where I come from.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Nature's Place 
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