jmgoyder

wings and things

Dec 20

Leftovers

by jmgoyder

What I mean by ‘leftovers’ here consists of the things I have forgotten to mention in previous posts –  for example:

1. Many of the photos I now use, to accompany my little stories, were taken randomly before I even knew what a blog was.

2. None of the photos I’ve taken since I started this blog have been ‘staged’; even the Ouch post was a spontaneous series of photos.

3. I am trying to take better photos with my new camera but I don’t seem to have the visual instinct required – will keep trying!

4. Weiros grind their teeth/beaks and I mean GRIND! Buttons is on my shoulder doing it now and it’s actually quite noisy and annoying!

5. Argh – Wantok is doing it now – that GRINDING thing! She does it quite loudly too.

6. I think Buttons might be a boy because apparently her/his big, round, orange cheeks indicate maleness and might explain why he is so enamoured of me (his beak under my chin right now, left eye curved up to meet mine, lots of snuggling).

7. Despite Son’s reluctance to embrace the ‘bird thing’, as he calls it, he and Wantok are so infatuated with each other that I feel a bit left out!

8. I am meticulous about grammar so sometimes I go back and edit past posts for posterity. I’m not sure if this is normal, but who cares. On the other hand, does anyone else do this?

9. WordPress is incredible in many ways but there are definitely a few glitches and I seem to keep falling into ALL of them!

10. Even though I am not lonely, or isolated, it is great to be meeting other bloggers who are wiser than I am.

11. This 11 is just to break up 10’s domination and just to say that, even though I said at the outset that there would be a photo with every post, it’s not always possible.

12. Husband comes home from hospital on Friday – yeeha!

Wings

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Dec 16

Cockatoo eats Ab swing

by jmgoyder

The most wonderful thing is happening! Every day, Wantok is eating, mutilating and destroying a little bit more of my Ab swing (you know those exercise machines that are supposed to give you a flat stomach in a few days).

Okay, I bought this Ab swing thing a couple of years ago but it hasn’t worked. Apparently, according to the instructions, you have to use it for it to work and, even though I’ve used it quite a bit in my imagination, I still haven’t actually climbed onto it and done what the flat-stomached young woman in the dvd does.

So the fact that Wantok is destroying it is a bit of a guilty relief. She’s nearly finished with the handles and the foot bits of this contraption (which are rubber) and now she has begun on the steel base. She should have it completely obliterated by New Year’s Eve which will be great because then I won’t have to make that particular resolution again – yeeha!

Oh, Wantok, how I love you! Do you know, she even has Buttons chomping away at the more easily destroyable bits of the Ab swing. They are such a great team!

Wings

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Nov 29

A picture worth a thousand birds

by jmgoyder

The above is a photo of a lithograph by John Gould (information link below). It was emailed to me by the gallery exhibiting and selling some of his work this week. Having bought a couple of lithographs from this gallery over the years, we were on their mailing list so I thought it was an extraordinary cooincidence to receive an invitation that featured this famous picture of a red-tailed black cockatoo just days after I had acquired Wantok. As I had paid a small fortune for her, I now wondered if it might have been wiser to simply buy a picture – this picture.

I’m not stupid, but I am a bit naive. Wantok cost a bit, but guess what this picture was priced at?

$27,500AUS

I think I’ll just frame the invitation picture!

Or maybe not; after all, I have the real thing – I have Wantok!

http://australianmuseum.net.au/The-Gould-League-of-Bird-Lovers

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Wings

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Nov 27

Flying lessons

by jmgoyder

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’.

Wings

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