Okay, okay, two people figured it out. Yes, Wantok is a red-tailed black cockatoo!
Here is some information:
Flying lessons
I have a new bird and I am teaching her to fly.
Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous because I actually can’t fly myself, although I did try tried several times as a child until my dad banished me from my flight pad on the garage roof. The second time I broke my arm he decided that the time had come to explain to me that my arm was an arm and that it would never be a wing. I remember sobbing. I was four.
This new bird is five months old and has been hand-raised. She has come all the way from the other side of Australia. She is beautiful, exotic, an endangered species and, even though she is temporarily in a cage in our veranda (right next to our weiro’s cage) I let both birds out during the day and they usually hang out on top of the biggest cage, munching seed and chattering to each other.
Last evening, I put Buttons the weiro to bed in her cage so I could concentrate on our new bird’s first flying lesson. I flapped my arms up and down and she looked at me from her perch for a moment, then suddenly began to copy me and, a moment later, she was flying all around the veranda – wow! I was a little disconcerted when she smashed into me but when I picked her up she pressed her substantial beak against my nose as if to say, “that was fun!”
Her name is ‘Wantok’.
Letting him fly away
Okay, this post is not about birds as such, except symbolically, in a wing-like way.
Today, Son has gone down south with his two best friends to ‘Leavers’ or ‘Schoolies‘ (in Australia, this is the week in which hundreds of kids who have finished high school inundate the best holiday destinations around the country). The noise of their arrival in otherwise fairly quiet beach locales is, I am told, very like a scene from that classic horror movie, The Birds.
I am, and always have been, a mother-hennish-type, overprotective, overindulgent and overanxious about our only child. So this business of letting him fly away for three nights is a bit scary for me, but his obvious exhilaration to get away from us (expressed rather too vehemently last night) was, I have to admit, contagious.
“I wish I could come too,” I said to Son and his friends.
“Yeah, Mum, whatever,” said Son, a slightly nauseous expression on his face.
“Will you miss Dad and me?”
“I guess.”
“Will you miss Doc and Blaze?”
“Of course – you better feed them, Mum!”
“Will you miss the birds?”
Son grabbed a pad from the kitchen table and in capital letters he wrote, “I WILL NOT MISS THE BIRDS!!!”
It’s okay – he’ll have flown back by Monday and everything will be back to ‘normal’.
Father goose
Godfrey: Now, listen up, you four. We are geese! I insist that you to stop fraternizing with the ducks. They have absolutely no manners, no morals and they are filthy. Pearl, wake up – you are to stop associating with Zaruma. You’re not children anymore. You are a Sebastopol goose and Zaruma is a muscovy duck. Need I say more?
Seli: I am getting really sick of these morning lectures.
Ola: Yeah, that Godfather guy is a real piece of work.
Seli: Where is he now?
Ola: I think he’s teaching Pearl some sort of etiquette thing.
Seli: What’s ‘etiquette’?
Ola: Pearl reckons it’s something to do with standing up straight and stretching your neck up high.
Seli: What for?
Ola: Dunno – hey, there’s Zaruma. Let’s make a run for it!
Seli: Wait for me!
“Murmuration”
I just cannot get enough of this video of the starlings by Sophie Windsor Clive. I realise many of you will have seen it as it is certainly doing the rounds, but it’s breathtaking.
Thank you, Sophie; thank you starlings!
Guinnea fowl blockades?
The reason this turkeyish creature looks so lost and alone is because it is a guinnea fowl and it has temporarily misplaced its group of other guinnea fowl. The other reason it looks so lost and alone is because it has a very small brain and, possibly, very poor eyesight too, because the rest of the guinneas are less than a metre outside the frame of this photo.
But these were the birds that Husband first chose to add a bit of aesthetic interest to our garden and to our lives and, yes, I like them too, but, of all the birds, they are the least approachable, the most noisy and the stupidest. A good example of the latter is that if anyone is driving up (or down) the driveway and the guinneas are pecking away at the gravel, no amount of tooting the horn, or revving the engine, will get them to move. They might come up to the front of your vehicle and stare absently at the licence plate, perhaps nibble a few dead bugs off the fenders but they will NOT get out of the way!
Some mornings, I actually have to get out of the car or the ute and shoo them away before I can even get to the front gate to go to the local shop to get the newspaper, milk and fresh bread.
I try to love these guinneas as much as I love the other birds, but it’s hard because they are so thick! And they don’t love me back the way the other birds do; they just glance at me occasionally. Their indifference to me is quite hurtful.
“But they look so lovely on the lawns, Jules,” Husband says fondly (not fondly to me, fondly of them). This is usually when I go in and grab a wine before I trudge back down the long, long driveway to fetch the vehicle that the guinneas have once against trapped. Argh!
On the other hand, it’s just occurred to me that, as a group, they might be quite useful to the police if a blockade were required to deter a runaway criminal. Yes – this could work. I’ll ring the cops now and see what they think. We have 15 guinneas so they could probably do it in shifts of five.
I guess I better check with Husband first; he might not approve.
Filofaxes versus ‘fictofacts’
Okay, I just received my first really negative comment and guess who it was from? Son. He was furious about the ‘love/hate’ post (see comments) because he didn’t think it was exactly accurate and he didn’t like being portrayed that way. I pointed out to him that I had to disguise some of the people in the incident described in order to protect their anonymity.
“But what about my anonymity?” he yelled, “and what if your readers now think all your stories are made up?” Then, stomping off, “I’m not the wimp in that story!”
“Look, this is the first story I’ve slightly altered, okay? I won’t do it again without admitting to the readers.”
“And leave me out of the blog from now on, Mum,” he said more gently.
“Okay,” I said as one of the cocks crowed.
Note: As mentioned before, I taught English and Creative Writing for years and that whole truth/fiction conundrum used to spark a lot of debate. One thing I’ve decided is that if you are going to fabricate a story a little, it is much more honest and sincere to admit that, than simply to pretend it’s 100% accurate.
Well, what do you think?
The unusual ‘bird’
The expression on this man’s face bears a striking resemblance to that of an old friend of Husband’s who recently dropped in to visit us, after I asked him if he wanted to come out and see the birds.
He didn’t know I’d seen his grimace and at first I thought he might have been coming down with a migraine or something.
“Are you okay?” I asked, leading him out the door, “the birds will relax you.”
But halfway across the back lawn, he stopped abruptly and, with barely disguised irritation, said, “Do I have to see the birds today? I did see them last time, remember?”
“Yeah and you should see how big the geese have grown!” I enthused, but his expression hardened and I suddenly saw myself very clearly from his perspective.
Oh, how embarrassing!
I would have to stop assuming everybody was interested in the birds, and I vividly recollected having to suffer a seemingly endless tour of someone’s poultry breeding farm once when I only wanted to buy a few chickens.
“I’ve actually come to visit you two, if that’s all right,” the friend said. His voice softened as he saw the look of mortification on my face, but then we both started laughing and couldn’t stop until we reached the kitchen where Husband sat waiting for the kettle to boil.
“What’s so funny?”
“You have a very unusual ‘bird’ here,” our friend said, glancing pointedly at me.
Husband put his arm around me. “Mmmm,” he grinned.
Admittance fee: One lettuce please
The birds have brought us so much joy over the months that a lot of our friends have begun to bring their friends to see them – people of all ages. Even a couple of the breeders I bought from have been curious to see how tame these birds have become and how happy they are.
So as the word got around about our birds, I was struck with a brilliant idea, half entrepeunerial and half philanthropic. I would invite groups of primary school children and groups of nursing home residents for a fee. Not only would this bring the young and old together, I might even get rich!
As the plan unfolded I set up some picnic tables, enquired as to the cost of portable toilets, and decided to make it a BYO arrangement so as not to have to serve food or drinks. I envisioned this as a weekly event, very casual and layback. Even Husband and Son both approved (highly unusual to get ‘permission’ from both of them for a new idea!)
I only had one thing left to check and that was the ‘just-in-case-something-happens’ insurance – indemnity insturance. Initially, I was told that we were already covered for this, so I started planning flyers and invitations, making lists and contacting teachers and registrars who I already knew.
I was so excited! Then, just as I was about to plan the first of these occasions, the phone rang and it was our insurers who broke the news that due to the presence of children and of the elderly, all sorts of terrible things might happen so the insurance would cost at least $4,000AUS per year.
Oh well I’ll just have to go back to what we were already doing, which was to welcome visitors and friends any time but I think I’ll start charging from now on – one lettuce per person.
Flying on and away
I realise that to many people grieving over the death of a bird may seem ridiculous or trivial and that, compared to losing a human companion – a child, friend, spouse, sibling, partner – it may even seem a little ‘wrong’.
That, being said, the discovery of Emery’s corpse (fox attack) at the side of a laneway in the back paddock today has been a terrible blow and the fact that Emerytwo and Emerytoo are still missing probably means that they are dead too. You see, unlike most of our other birds, emus can’t fly – they can’t fly to safety.
I will only post about the Emerys again if the latter two turn up, but I know they won’t because they would have by now. So, another lesson in loss.
One of the most beautiful gestures I have ever seen at a relative’s funeral was when the two adult sons, having delivered the eulogy, said goodbye to their father by leaving the podium and simulating flight; they raised their arms up and down, like wings, until they got back to their seats.
You can fly now, my three Emerys.
jmgoyder 