We opened the door of our tiny old slow combustion stove to make a fire one night, and as my husband began to clean out the lumps of charred wood and ash from the previous night, our (then) 3-year old son said "There's a bird in there!" We paused, and looked more closely, but no said my husband "it's just old wood - it looks like a bird though". And as he reached into the stove to clean it away, the small bird-shaped piece of wood blinked at us. "It's a bird!" said our son. My husband collected it carefully in his hand and stood up. It was a very sooty New Holland honeyeater, and as my husband moved towards the front door, it began to flap and scream - so much anger in such a tiny bird! He held it carefully by the feet, and when we got outside, it quieted. He opened his hand - down low so our son could see - and the bird looked at us all very thoughtfully before flying away. Then the next few years we had front-yard visits from a pair of honeyeaters who seemed remarkably unafraid of us and would come quite close to us as we came and left the house. Was it our bird? Maybe. We like to think so.
Barbara Coddington
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