A life of birds

Birds can be so emotive – the call of doves takes me back fifty years to my grandmother’s house at Plympton – cockatoos mean waking at Blanchetown in the caravan park before the 24 Canoe Marathon. Birds just seemed everywhere in France, twittering away companionably and I always wondered if they spoke a different language to Australian birds.

Years ago when teaching at the local primary school, a study was done of student fears and the fear of seagulls won hands down. Children are genuinely fearful of eating near them and of course seagulls knew that the school ground was a smorgasbord. Woe betide anyone who left a sandwich on a bench! Years later I taught at another local school and while on duty talking to a student, a seagull flew past me and I experienced the horror of its wing grazing my mouth. I felt totally violated, made worse only by the fact that it came down again and snatched my sandwich. Taking a class on a local excursion saw us having lunch at the local playground. One of my parents who came with us was a solid built policeman and he decided to have a pie for lunch. The look on his face when a seagull swooped, took the pie out of his hands and dropped it at his feet should have been photographed. Later, we shifted campus up onto a hill and we enjoyed months of seagull-free school days – they just hadn’t twigged! Clearly they thought that we were on an extended holiday. Word finally spread and the problems began again – but they do keep the snakes down – but that’s another story! I’m sure if you asked many people what they associated with Victor Harbor it would be the seagulls.

For years at Easter we collected our beautiful crop of walnuts from the tree at our back door – big, fleshy, tasty walnuts. Alas, the sulphur-crested cockatoos found out about them and they screech in our trees, chew up the green walnuts and spit them out over the lawn and out side furniture. We are lucky to have a dozen walnuts now.  

When I was growing up we had a budgerigar called Goldie. He was certainly a character. We would scald the fresh milk on top of our wood stove and he sometimes flew straight in and flew out again quite unperturbed. He would sit on the end of my brother’s pen as he did his homework and nibble the edges of his pages, flicking the little bits over his back. I hate birds’ feet and it took me six months to have the courage to let him sit on my finger, Every couple of months the Rawleighs salesman would come and have a meal with us as he was a family friend. He and my father would have a beer together and Goldie would always head straight for Mr McGuire’s beer glass – no-one else’s, force his head down through Mr Mac’s fingers and satisfy his thirst.

My aunt lived at Broadview many years ago and she was telling me that she had a neighbour who was something of a hypochondriac. When the neighbour visited one day my aunt made the mistake of asking her how she was and a string of problems was listed. My aunt’s cockatoo was nearby in its cage and when she’d finished her litany of woes, it screeched ‘Jesus Christ!’     

There is nothing more beautiful than rowing on the river at Goolwa, a group of us or just David and I, in the early morning or at sunset, when the water is still and the reflections beautiful. Swans and pelicans bob by our sides and then scare the living daylights out of us as they suddenly decide to fly off. It is such a joy to watch them so close and we feel that the world is ours and wonder why others aren’t out enjoying this amazing spectacle. All seems right with the world and it is a true meditative experience.

Heather England