The Hungry Magpie

My Mummy, my brother Alister and I (Adilya) look after a family of magpies. They eat the cat food when the cat is still eating it. Sometimes the magpies push the cat out of the way and he has to wait. One day we spent a long time trying to take a large moth out of the house. We were very careful not to hurt its wings. It escaped a couple of times but we finally got it. When we opened the back door to release it, the biggest magpie swooped down and ate it! We didn't speak we were so shocked. But then my Mummy laughed.

Adilya Fitzgerald
Age 9

Blackbirds - stories

Blackbirds - story #1

When I was little my Mum used to tell us kids: "the blackbirds are Father Christmas' helpers... they're watching and they'll tell him if youv'e been bad or good".

We had a green back lawn, with stepping stones out to the HIlls Hoist.

I would look out of the kitchen window onto the lawn and see the blackbirds hopping, just going abut their business (perfectly nonchalant I used to think).

I was a good girl.

I love that very effective ploy of my Mum's but I never used it on my own kids, I think because of another story my nephew (now in his thirties) once told me: that his Mum had told him Father Christmas watches, and that he was always a little bit scared going to bed each night he might catch sight of a bearded old man peeking through the curtains.

  

Blackbirds - story #2

Someone once told me that blackbirds are the rats of the garden.

When I go down the back, where the veggies grow, I sometimes catch one out the corner of my eye  scurrying past through the undergrowth catching bugs (they make me jump sideways). 

I am always relieved when it is a blackbird not a rat.

Blackbirds - story #3

A blackbird used to nest each year in the same spot, in the ash tree just next to the pergola, where we would throw the ball for the dog (the dog would go crazy barking at the birds all through spring as the babies grew, but the birds don't nest there anymore, and at any rate, he is too blind and too deaf to notice).

Blackbirds - story # 4

There is a bird call that my husband whistles back to (I think it is the blackbird). My son does it too (really well). I can't always tell if it is the bird I'm hearing in the garden, or if he is somewhere just out of sight.

Lisa Harms

waking....

waking…..

was that you I heard in the night calling me

lulling me back to sleep?

was that your breath from the window

brushing my cheek and resting on my lips?

was that your body hiding in the shadows

wrapping your softness around me?

was that you I saw setting

lighting up the sky for all to see?

was that your sweet voice I heard on waking

singing a beautiful bird song?

Cathy Frawley

Malevolent Magpie

My own story is set some 22 years ago. I was a 13 year old by riding my bike to school when i was walloped in the side of my head by what I initially though was a newspaper. Looking about to see who was throwing things at me, I was struck again with such force that I fell off my bike. Looking about to see my tormenter, I raised my hand my head I was startled to see it come back tinged in blood – my blood. Fear was replacing my confusion and I saw a back shape streaking again to me. I held my hands up to shield my head while at the same time crawling away from my ‘attacker’. I saw another passer-by and croaked out “Help me”. The passer by just looked at me blankly and covering their own tent they ran away and left me to my fate. By now my head had cleared enough that I was a bit more aware and I saw a malevolent magpie banking around for what I realised was another swoop. I scrambled further along the bike path dragging my bike behind me and eventually got out of range. Once the attacks ended I got back on my bike and pedalled to the relative safety of my best friends house. His mother administered Betadine onto each of the tiny pockmarks that ran down the side of my head, just below the dubious protection afforded by my helmet. I have never been a fan of magpies and even less after this rather humbling experience.

Martin Sawtell

The Magpies wake gathering.

My mother told me these stories. I was living in Sydney at the time, around the late 1980s. My father and my mother used to like to feed a family of magpies each day. They would arrive near the back door each waiting for some diced ham that my father would give to them. Being recently retired and unwell, he enjoyed this task and seeing the birds each day. My parents were very fond of this family of magpies. The male magpie started arriving initially, he must have been single and then for a while he disappeared and then returned with a female magpie and three little ones. He came to the back door and called. Then turned to his family just behind as much to say I would like to introduce you to the clan. They waited anxiously a bit away. He made a sound to the female bird, she then came forward to say hello or to be introduced to my parents. Consequently the diced ham needed to be increased somewhat.  

On another occasion my mother spotted an injured magpie on the front lawn. It didn't look very well. It had a couple of magpies nearby keeping watch so it could die in safety. The bird did die near dusk. My mother saw many magpies sitting on the telegraph wires in front of their house. There must have been about 40 magpies. They starting singing. This lasted for about 45 mins. From dirges to more uplifting "hymns". Eventually they flew off. The funeral or gathering was over. The bird then could be picked up by mother and buried.

Bev Southcott

Bird Stops

A few years ago I was in a very stressful employment situation. I

> would lie awake at night worrying, be anxious about the job situation

> as soon as I work up each day, and dreaded going in to the office. I

> walked to work each morning across the parklands by the river -

> sometimes taking off my shoes to feel the dewy grass under my feet. At

> some point I  resolved with myself that each day, if I heard a bird

> singing I would stop and scan the tree branches until I could see it,

> and watch it sing till its song was all that filled my being.

>

> I have no idea about bird species except for the most common, but

> every bird and whose song captured me, gave me a precious gift of

> peace, a sense of calm and a connection with the bigger world. After

> these bird stops I  could to go into the day with contentment and

> optimism.
Melinda Rackham

Brother and the budgie

When my housemate was growing up his family had pet budgies. One day he and his mother discovered one bird had died. She was worried about how my friend’s younger brother would deal with the news- not being quite old enough to grasp the concept of death yet. They decided to bury it in the backyard followed by a small service to say goodbye. It went well and his younger brother seemed to deal with the death well enough and say his farewell. It was my housemate’s job to feed the birds each morning and the next day when he began his chores he discovered the exhumed corpse of the bird they’d honoured in yesterday’s ceremony, taped fast to the perch. The birds who shared its cage were pressed up against the bars in horror. He's still not sure if his brother misunderstood the funeral, or was just a premature prankster.

Kate Moskwa

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

Ancient fellow creatures

Peter and I have just returned from Troubridge Island.

It's just one of those magical places that demands your connection.

It's really just a tiny patch of scrub on an endlessly respiring body of sand, 

but it is home to thousands of birds.

Each night they fill the darkness with ass like braying, growls and screams

and I couldn't help but think of the Musicians of Brenham.

Every unoccupied hideaway is enthusiastically sourced and claimed,

so that to wander barefooted and silently, it was very easy to be privy to their most

intimate rituals.

Sitting very still at night, illuminated by a full moon and stripped of colour, the dances, shuffling, darting, strutting,

of penguins and rails in particular, is a joyful and humbling experience, to

come to the realisation that despite our presumed importance and superiority,

these ancient fellow creatures have just gone about their business successfully 

without the need to get bigger and better and advertise that fact to the world.

I love this line from Judith Wright in her poem BIRDS

"whatever the bird is, is perfect in the bird.''

Lyn Wood

The sorry Lorikeet

In the house behind ours in Prospect there is a huge palm tree. We sit outside in the evening watching the comings and goings of the many different types of birds that treat the palm tree as a multistorey residence. One evening there was a really strong wind and in the morning we found a very young Rainbow Lorikeet among the geraniums. It was looking very sorry for itself.

We have two cats and we realised that once the cats got out in the garden the little bird was too vulnerable to survive their attention. We kept the cats inside and I rang the RSPCA. They couldn't help directly but referred me to the Bird Rescue and Wildlife Care organisation. I rang them and they said, try to keep the cats in as long as possible. Put the little bird higher up in a tree where it wouldn't be so vulnerable to the cats. If the parents of the bird were nearby they would come and feed the little bird and it was highly likely in those circumstances that it would recover and eventually be able to fly in a few days.

When I went back outside the little bird had already managed to move to a low branch on a tree. As the day went by the little bird made its way further up the tree until it was very close to the top. A mature Rainbow Lorikeet began  to appear at the top of the huge palm tree and began a sad call. We guessed it was the mother trying to locate the baby bird.

Eventually she located the baby in our much smaller tree. Mum came down and started feeding the little bird and was then joined by Dad. We watched over a couple of days as this took place and eventually we came back from work one night to find all three birds had gone and no doubt returned to their penthouse suite in the palm tree.

John Hewson

Photographs copyright of John Hewson

Nesting together.

Sitting in the garden one day in a dreamy state of late pregnancy I noticed a honeyeater busily making a nest in a young native frangipani tree, just above my eye level. Day after day I watched her flitting in and out of the tree , chattering, building the structure with certainty and skill. I found the intimacy of my vantage point joyful and calming and treasured this time of shared pursuit as I, too, was ‘nesting’ inside the house.

Preoccupied with the arrival of my new baby, it was a while later when I  noticed a broken white shell under the tree and the tatty, abandoned nest, and realised, sadly, the honeyeater’s charges may not have arrived safely after all.

Liz Hetzel

Bird Tales from childhood into adulthood

I grew up on a farm on the Eyre Peninsula and remember a couple of Willy Wag Tails who took up residence just above our back door. With the coming and goings in and out of that door I’m surprised they bothered to build a nest - let alone stay as long as they did! I loved to look out for them as a little girl and now well into adulthood, when I see them I find myself still captivated by their elegance, beauty and life.

For many years I also keenly listen for the presence of a Golden Whistler as I walked our 1km driveway to meet the school bus. When I heard it whistle, I would return the whistle and wait for it to whistle back. We would continue this for a good 2-300m on my morning walk to the school bus.

As a child, I also remember tracking the path of Plovers and Moor Hens who left telltale prints in the mud along the banks of the waterhole and adjoining creek on our farm.

Now I live in Adelaide and my husband is reckoning on his newly fruiting trees will survive bird ‘attacks’ because we live in the flight path and only seem to have pigeons nearby. I don’t tell him about the other birds I notice around the neighbourhood!

Renae

The Story of Peck Peck.

I was getting a lift to get my lunch in the shopping centre at Port Adelaide. (I was working at Tauondi Aboriginal College nearby). Well there was a little yellow bird in the middle of the car park, a canary. He was looking pretty still, but he was perched upright, a flash of yellow in all that grey bitumen. I guess he must have escaped from his cage or something and got lost. He was being swooped and pecked by Noisy Minor birds.

'Stop the car!' I exclaimed to Karen, my workmate, 'Theres a canary on the ground!' 

She let me out.

A 'P' plater came charging up the car-park in his beefy black car. 

'Stop!' I shouted. 'There's a bird!' I held my hand up, to stop him, and I stood in front of his car pointing at the bird with my other hand. He screeched to a stop. Craning over the steering wheel, he nodded at me.  I tore off my tee shirt (I had a tank top underneath) and threw it over the bird. Then I bundled him up and into Karen's car on my lap. We grabbed a roll and we went back to Tauondi. Upstairs in my office we found a cardboard box with some kind of lid. I put him in. I thought he would die. Birds can die of fright, can't they, and he'd been in the blaring sun, on that black bitumen, and it was a hot summer day too and he was probably dehydrated, shocked, and injured. I just though I'd give him a more comfortable death, in the shade, with a bit of my love going in to him. I unwrapped him in the box, and he looked up at me with his little pink beady eyes. I soaked a tissue in water and dripped some of it in to his beak. He gobbled it up. He chirped! He wanted more! I fed him more water. He started flapping and flapped up in to the air and about the office, fluttering down by Tony's desk (my other work mate). 

'Well he's looking a bit chirpier!' Said Karen.

'Here he is!' said Tony, 'Under my feet!' 

I grabbed my tee shirt and when he settled down I tossed it gently over him again.

Later I took him home. My cat, Ling Ling, she didn't mind. She's a bit odd and she just wanted to be his friend. We called him Peck Peck.

Sometimes I would let Peck Peck fly around the house on his own. He flew, round and around. He loved to perch on the curtains, and the tops of picture frames. He loved yellow things. So do I. It's my favourite colour. Sometimes I would put his cage outside, so he could feel the sun, and the shade, and the wind in his feathers. Cecil and Beverly, the two top-knot pigeons who frequent my back yard, they would come to visit and peck around his cage and chat to him. Sometimes I would catch Magpies or Noisy-Minors swooping on to his cage and scaring him, so I'd bring him in. 

Peck Peck started to sing. He'd chat, and chirp and twitter and he'd wake me up in the morning.

One day after letting him fly about the house, I put him in his cage, out in the back yard, because it was a beautiful day.

My friend rang with dramas about her love life. We talked for an hour. I went outside to check Peck Peck and he was gone. 

I think I hadn't shut his door properly. I looked around but I never saw Peck Peck again. Just some big bully minor birds, and Moses the tame magpie with half his top beak missing. (He gets around okay like that.) Cecil and Beverly still come to visit, and we chat about old times with Peck Peck.

 I painted my kitchen yellow in his memory.

Fran Callen

Cough Cocky

When I first arrived in Adelaide in the early eighties, the Hyde Park Hotel was still a working mans drinking spot and the way to the lavatories was via an outside courtyard and passed a magnificent Sulphur Crested Cockatoo in a cage. It was impossible not to stop and look at him, to say hello. He would reply 'Hello cocky' and then give a prolonged and hacking smoker's cough, the sort of cough that takes forty or fifty years of hand rolled tobacco. When shortly after I met this amusing bird and the pub was gentrified, the cocky was the first thing to go. These birds live a very long life and I hope he is coughing away in a good home.

Lisa Young

A poem read by Mum

If you find a little feather
a little white feather
a soft and tickly feather
it's for you

A feather is a letter from a bird
and it says
"Think of me
Do not forget me
Remember me always
Remember me forever
Or remember me at least
Until the little feather is lost

So if you find a little feather 
a little white feather
a soft an tickly feather
it's for you
pick it up and put it in your pocket

By Beatrice Schenk de Regniers from the book 'Something Special'

submitted by Rebecca Taylor

Bringing in the birds

When I bought my first five acres at Second Valley Forest back in 1993, I didn't see many birds. In fact, the only tree on the block was a fossilised stump. So, I set about planning a house, drawing up a tree planting 'map' via Permaculture principles and growing seedlings through Trees for Life.

My first up-front experience with birds was as I started planting the seedlings. As I planted the Blue gums before putting on mulch and tree guards, I heard the sound of a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo just behind me. I looked back, and here was this cheeky little bastard blithely following behind me, nipping off the tops of the trees as I planted them!

The tree planting continued as my mud brick house emerged in slow stages. And lying down on the hillside having a cold Coopers one day I noticed a pair of Wedge-tailed eagles flying way above. The land is about 1000ft above Second Valley, and these magnificent birds were soaring another 1000ft above that.

I often walked in the nearby original forest, and one day came across a wonderful treasure - an eagle's nest with two chicks. Sensitive to the eagle's feeding patterns, I set up a temporary hide under some Swamp gums and visited most weekends when I came down to work on the house.

Within a few months, I was astounded to see four Wedgies floating above my land, the two adults training their young how to hunt & fly the thermals. By this stage the 800 or so trees I'd planted (according to dowsing principles by following the earth energy lines) were growing well and a few Adelaide Rosellas and Rainbow lorikeets were visiting to suck the nectar.

So, I started to plant lower growing bushes like the Sticky Bush, Curry Bush, Rosemary and French & Italian Lavender. As they grew so did the number of small birds - Blue Wrens, Firetails, small finches, honey eaters and many more. Now there was a cacophony of bird sounds every day, particularly when I started putting out water in several birdbaths. I didn't realise that it could become a fulltime job.

 

Of course, larger birds also started to appear, including Shrikes, Magpies, Bush Pigeons, Yellow-& red tailed Black Cockatoos, the wonderfully musical Thrushes and the beloved naughty storytellers of the Pitjantjatjara Lands, the Willy Wagtails.

 

Then about eight years ago, some international visitors started to appear every year. A couple of Welcome Swallows soon grew to be a whole tribe - they love the mud brick as they can mould it into their nests. And on the dam, a yearly visit from a Japanese Grey Ibis and native ducks.

 

So even as I write this story 18 years later, I can hear the wonderful chorus of birdsong outside. Creating a special environment for my friends the birds has immeasurably enriched my life.

Garry Benson
All photography copyright of Garry Benson

The Birds of Wasleys

I live in Wasleys SA. We have a large bird bath out the front of our house and we get about 40 to 50 Galahs coming for a drink and then they hang around on the electricity wires and in the trees nearby. We love it when they come there every night. We also have people stopping to take photos and we also get other birds coming down for a drink.
Jan Siles
Wasleys SA

Whyalla and the wedge-tailed eagle

My mother was born in Whyalla. While I was growing up she would tell me about a woman who was heavily pregnant in a farm just out of town. One day she was out on the property when she saw a wedge-tailed eagle caught in some fence wire.

The woman tried to help the eagle, but whilst she was helping it to untangle itself, the bird's talon scratched her on the belly. The woman wasn't harmed, and the eagle flew off.

The woman forgot about the incident until the baby was born, when she saw on the child's side - where the eagle's scratch would have been - the most perfect eagle-shaped birthmark, that the girl was to have for life.

Andy Best

Black Cockatoos in Rostrevor

As many as 10 years ago I heard a lot of loud noise coming from the east of my house. On observing I saw a flock of about 20 Red Tailed Black Cockatoos! I was told that I had been mistaken, but there is no misaking the Red Tailed Black Cockatoos. They were in a pine tree (Radiata I think) feeding on the pine cones. I did not take a photo and have not seen or heard them since - unfortunately.
Elaine Howson
Rostrevor

Zara

Zara (submitted to the SA Museum nest box, February 2011)

The dinosaur biting bird

A bird met a dinosur and the bird bit its tail. And then the dinosaur cried. A snake went down from the trees and then the dinosaur hopped into its racing car. And then the bird met a turtle in a monster truck. Then the bird flew into its bird house and popped out a few eggs. Then on Wednesday the eggs hatched and then they had their first flying test.
Heath Davis
aged 4 1/2

Birdspotting by a 3yr old

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

The Bird and the Butterfly

The bird met a butterfly and a bat as it was flying across the jungle. It also met a wibbly wobbly spider and a snake. Then after it finished flying it flew up to a nest in the tree and waited for his mummy to come.
Amelia Davis
Aged 4 1/2

Baby Galah gets rescued

An injured galah baby just about to be able to fly was in its cage recuperating when a large flock of other galahs came down calling to it. They made a flying platform for the baby one to flap onto, then they all flew in unison with the baby one up to a huge branch and somehow the baby one got onto the branch (flapping). It was an amazing sight.
Anonymous (from the nest box in SA museum)

Alex aged 4

Received via the nest box (SA Museum)

Jack Sparrow

Attending a wedding luncheon at the Victory Hotel at Sellicks Hill a few weeks ago it was 42degrees. High under a tin roof sparrow nestlings were literally jumping from their nest to avoid cooking to death. Only 1 with a few tiny feathers survived the fall to the concrete 5 meters below. The hotel staff when approached offered to 'ring his neck'. I took the tiny fledgeling home and called him Jack after the Pirate Jack Sparrow of  movie fame. With advice from the fauna rescue service I raised him. His house was  a fluffy bed sock and I hand fed him hourly by syringe and a cut straw spoon. A few weeks later and he's feeding himself, flying and ready to be released back at the Victory next week. Sparrows can live for 15 years and are very sociable and gregarious and because they are not territorial there's a good chance Jack will be accepted back into his family flock. I'm going to ask Doug the owner if I can put a feeder up for the first few weeks, maybe a small nesting box away from the tin roof and a laminated note to introduce Jack to the patrons. So if you're at the Victory Hotel out in the garden and a little sparrow lands on your shoulder and starts tweeting in your ear, say hello to little Jack for me and be sure to leave him some crumbs.
Di

Welcome Swallow

On a particularly hot day, I discovered a Welcome Swallow laying prostrate on the hot bricks in front of my office window. It would not have been long before he expired. He was really gasping. I picked him up and brought him inside in the cool and offered him some water in a spoon, which he sipped. He seemed to revive, but was quite happy to stay in my hand. I kept him in my hand for an hour or so and offered him more water. I found a little box and lined it with tissues and popped him in. He seem to like being in a small area and appeared quite relaxed. I decided I would release him at home. I put him on a branch of our apricot tree. He stayed long enough for me to take a photo and then flew away. I was so tickled pink that he had recovered enough to fly.
Deb Thompson