*Quiet time* was something of a misnomer this morning.
I have a cane chair upstairs in our overlarge bedroom where I can prop my feet on the low windowsill & look out through the canopy to the slow swirl of water that is our bay. There are usually lots of the little birds:finches, honeyeaters, silvereyes, flycatchers & fantails flitting through the leaves & warbling away. It creates a happy background noise for prayer. That all changed this morning.
It wasn't that the sound was unhappy ~ just, well, noisy. Lots of squawks & squeaks & arks punctuated by a shrill trill. I just had to open my eyes & peek. There, perched along my verandah rail, was a whole family of butcher birds & despite their extremely grotty feeding habits I am very fond of butcher birds because they have the loveliest song of all the bush birds. And they were all very intently watching the very fat grand~daddy of a butcher bird try to fit himself flat in my bird bath & roll around making sure every last feather got a good drenching. The peanut gallery had plenty of advice to offer about the process to boot!
As I watched more & more birds arrived until there were over half a dozen in various stages of either attempting to get into the bath, drink from the rim or dry off after their ablutions.
Half an hour later all that remained was one lone half~grown chick perched forlornly on the rail & a seriously depleted bird bath!
4 comments:
I love sitting on my bench by the front door watching the birds. In recent months a family of Kookaburras have moved in and I just love listening to them talk.
I have a bird bath but birds never come to visit it, I am not sure why,perhaps because they know I have a cat in the garden during the day?!
Joluise:I have 3 birds baths scattered about the yard & all get used despite my cats. The birds seem to know the cats habits though & choose their times to visit.
My husband has loved birds since he was a little boy, and I've learned the same love from being married to him. You probably know my favorite. I read about the butcherbird - do you ever see them attack other birds? That would be hard to see, for me. Would love to see video of the peanut gallery someday.... :)
No, I've never seen them attack ~ though I have seen them be attacked! ☺ Other birds tend to harry them as they do our big kites. They ride the blind spot on the wing shoulder & attack. I was stunned the first time I saw a really small bird go for a predator.
I notice one of the adults is already back at the bird bath this morning. UNfortunately that means all the little birds will find somewhere safer. :(
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