Over the last week or so, I’ve been moving my writing/art workspace from the back room to the ‘front room’ which we never really used much. We got rid of the big, heavv lounge suite, and it’s amazing how much room that has freed up.
I’m looking forward to combining my writing with watching the wattle birds and honeyeaters hanging upside-down in the grevillea to reach the flowers, while magpies sing on the power wires until the willie wagtails gang up to shoo them and the crows away.
Talking of crows, there seem to be a lot more of them than previously. Twenty of them, what can be best described as ‘a murder of crows’, congregated on a neighbour’s lawn yesterday afternoon, and my morning walk was accompanied by a loud cacophony of ‘caw, caw, caws’ a sound that brings fond memories of walking to school along sandy short cuts through the bush. But how many crows is too many? The trouble is they have adapted to living in our throw-away society, and can always find bins overflowing with plastic-bagged food scraps, to tear open and spread around.
We have a lot of birds around where we live, unusual for a suburban area. Probably because we still have plenty of trees. Sadly, however the tall trees that used to attract the red-tailed black cockatoos to our little park have been cut down, but it is good to know that the cockies are still around. Some flew over the other day.
Of course, that’s the trouble, while we happily remove the habitat of birds like them, more enterprising creatures like crows, ibis and seagulls can live off our mess. Then when they breed up, we get calls to cull them. Though crows have always had rather a bad reputation, I like to see the ibis wandering around busily aerating our front lawn and think those of us who have lived near the ocean will always have a soft spot for seagulls. I’m still trying to get the ones in this painting right.
Lynne Cairns 