Mountain Tails (3 page)

Moist ground, short grass, worms a-wriggling, birds a-watching—snap!

Kookaburras claim my fence posts, my gates, my tree guards, my guttering, the glasshouse roof and the bare wintry branches of my stone fruit trees. Like sentries in castle turrets, they keep constant watch on their kingdom. For ages they stare fixedly at a spot in the apparently motionless paddock. It's as if they are commanding a worm to emerge there by such concentrated power of will.

In a cold wind they fluff up their feathers: basic off-white, elegantly speckled and heavily striped in chocolate brown, barred with black, underscored by amber, and with those sometimes hidden, so often
surprising, sky-blue dabs and dashes on the wings. A backcombing breeze makes their flat heads look ruffled and peaked like punks, but their heavily made up eyes are not distracted from their task.

Their beaks are big and tough and capacious, hooked at the end. Good for catching much bigger prey than worms or beetles, but that's what's on the menu in this clearing. Just a snack in between the morning and evening song sessions.

These are Laughing Kookaburras, sometimes called Laughing Jackasses, the largest members of the world's kingfisher family, all of whom are carnivorous for more than fish. This sort likes mice, as well as worms and insects and reptiles, and there are lots of small mouse-like marsupials here to make residency in my Refuge worthwhile. There are also lots of tree hollows, so it's a good nesting and breeding place for kookaburra families.

While we think of this kookaburra as our national Aussie icon, it was only indigenous to the eastern side of Australia—although not its drier areas—from Cape York in the north to Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. A paler, slightly smaller relative, the Blue-winged Kookaburra, also laughs, but in a less rollicking fashion, and it sticks to the more tropical parts of the country.

With that massive beak, our Laughing Kookaburra was not a welcome introduction to the south-west of Western Australia, and to Tasmania and Kangaroo Island, where it is now established. West Australian farmers say our kookaburras prey on their fowl, which I've never heard of them doing here, but once out of their natural ecosystem, who knows?

I've learnt that Laughing Kookaburras live for several decades and are stay-at-home family birds, partnering for life and keeping their offspring around them in large family groups, where all the older ones help their parents raise the nestlings.

Human families used to do that in the pre-Pill days when four kids was the norm; six and up if you were Catholic, obeyed the Pope and
relied on the unreliable rhythm method; two was unusual, a bit sad, given that there must be a physical reason why you'd stopped there; and the rare only child and its parents were much pitied. Bogging in to help feed the littlies, wipe their noses, find the other sock, tie their shoelaces or keep them away from under Mum's feet was the accepted cross of being older, just part of family life.

As kookaburras haven't heard about the Pill, things haven't changed for them. My head knows that those morning and evening kooka choruses that echo around the ridges here are to help the different family groups re-establish their territorial boundaries, like auditory suburban paling fences. Yet my heart says they also do it for sheer joy, since their performance is so wholehearted, beaks pointing skywards, throats vibrating, as they sing the daylight in and out.

For several years one kookaburra chose the railing at a corner of my verandah as his special vantage spot. I could open and shut the door, walk past, empty garbage, change boots, stockpile wood—and he would ignore me. Only now and then would this carved and painted effigy deign to momentarily turn ever so slightly towards me, giving the impression of a raised eyebrow even if he didn't actually have one. Not being potential tucker or predator, I was quickly dismissed as of no interest.

I'm watching one now: he's sitting on top of a garden stake, and he's not laughing. He's very serious; deadly serious, you could say. All that moves is his tail, up and down, slowly, a lever to keep him balanced on such a small perching area. Below this kooka's post a magpie struts back and forth, like a goalkeeper, keen to beat him to that worm. Magpies rule here. They're also carnivorous, and it's not the size of the beak that counts...

When I'm digging in the garden, several kookaburras post-sit like this and watch, ready to dive right next to my feet if that's where a worm, or part of one, is exposed. It's a little nerve-wracking, but not as much as it would be if I weren't wearing gumboots. Toes are rather like fat pink grubs, aren't they?

If a kookaburra catches a larger creature, like a lizard or snake, that mighty beak holds it firmly while bashing the dangling prey against a branch or a rock to kill and soften it for eating. When I was a child someone told me kookaburras laughed when they did this, which made me dislike them as cruel and gloating, but I know now that this isn't so, and in any case, only human animals have those qualities.

I don't see whether kooka or magpie scores this time but both are always extremely quick to react when something tasty appears. Zoom! I rarely see them disappointed—not many worms get away.

Just beyond them a wallaby grazes steadily across the paddock outside the fence, her joey-laden pouch seeming to skim the ground as she does. She's going about her daily business, like my feathered neighbours, and not bothering about me or mine. It's a good neighbourhood that way—and no barking dogs, whining mowers or hedgetrimmers, nor thumping music as son-of-house-four-doors-up washes the family car under duress.

Once I saw a strikingly symmetrical composition of creatures in the orchard, a line-up of paired animals.

Two kookaburras sat opposite each other, on two stakes of a netting guard; below each one stood a magpie; and just beyond them, outside the fence, two kangaroos faced each other as if posing for a coat of arms.

It was a fortuitous flash that soon broke apart, but it made me think of the animals queuing for the Ark, and thus my Refuge as being like that. Only it's not God's punitive Flood they need refuge from—it's Man.

Not all pairings are so visually brief as my kookaburra coat of arms. Amongst the small birds here, I notice several in constant couples. I'm not a proper birdwatcher; I don't have the binoculars and the bird books or my attention as handy as I should to qualify for that, so these birds have to be pretty obvious for me to notice details of their relationships.

The Welcome Swallows are definitely in favour of monogamy and the nuclear family. They twitter away in their little voices only to each other, despite the intimacy you'd expect to be generated between us by their returning to take up their permanent casual lease here each year. They look kindly at me, but I suppose they think I couldn't possibly understand, poor grounded thing that I am, so they don't actually address me.

Swallows don't always choose their nesting spot well. In fact, from my personal experiences I'm inclined to substitute ‘often' for ‘always', if I consider the faulty choice from both points of view: my convenience and their safety.

Needing some sort of ledge as a building platform, door and window lintels are popular. Then my hopper window gets spattered with white droppings if opened, or the doorstep perpetually does, or I occasionally do!

And they might choose a ledge so close to the tin eaves that the nestlings run the risk of frying as the days heat up. Or one that's too narrow; I've seen a half-finished nest fall off, smash and be rebuilt twice on the same inadequate support. Not real smart. Or once they chose a ledge right outside my bedroom window, to be sure I heard the incessant twittering. Mind you, I did enjoy watching their growing-up at such close quarters that year.

What with predatory birds like currawongs always hassling and on the lookout for unguarded or fallen babies, it's a relief to me and the parents when the nestlings are grown. Plus it's quieter.

On the first flight, they teeter with shock on the clothesline before discovering the obvious joy of the soaring aerobatics of the adults. I know they have to learn to do it to catch insects on the wing, but those early tries look like pure fun.

As I write this, the swallow pair have just arrived for the year and are doing large loops across the clearing, in under my verandah roof and out again, sussing out a site. They seem to be favouring my front-door lintel, so I'm deliberately going in and out a lot, to let them know that's
not
a good idea. Apart from unwanted droppings from above, on me and the mat, as the weather warms up the door will be open most days and I imagine there'd be a high chance of inadvertent flights into the cabin and an ensuing panic to find the way out again.

The Scarlet Robin and his pale lady friend also live here for part of the year but they're an exclusive pair, sufficient unto themselves. I read that
they have a ‘trilling warble' but I'm not aware of having heard them speak to each other, let alone to anybody, or anybirdy, else. Since they are such a solitary couple, I hope he's more affectionate to her in private, as in public he scrupulously preserves a royal distance of several yards between them.

They appear here in mid summer, to breed I suppose, but where they go afterwards I don't know. I mainly see them sitting—plumply but separately—on fences or low branches, their round black eyes on the lookout for insects. He's very notable, with a bright red waistcoat over a white shirt, and a black suit with smart contrasts of white, including a dab on his forehead. Typically, she's much more demurely dressed, but she does wear a feminine light pink vest under all the brown tones.

Other small birds seem to have a veritable harem, a flock of consorts. Like the Superb Blue Wren and his dusky tribe of fairy wrens, trilling and flicking in the bare wintry twists of the wisteria vine on my verandah, hopping from one level to another like fat little aerial circus performers, but fast-forwarded, double speed.

In fact his grey and brown followers are his wife and his children of both sexes, as the young males take a few seasons to mature and develop their bright colours. Meanwhile they stay at home, and, like the kookaburra kids, help with their younger brothers and sisters. Their parents have a sort of open marriage—they remain together for good, but happily have affairs on the side.

Their flashy father is only temporarily so, for he loses his blue plumage and moults back into asexual brown once the courtship and breeding is done, until next time. Rather like putting on the best suit to get the girl and then relaxing in the favourite baggy tracksuit until the display effort is needed again. But he's more than just a gaily dressed dandy; he does his fair share of the upbringing and housework as well as home security, and even helps with his ‘illegitimate' offspring.

When his grown male children turn blue they will be his competitors and then he is as fierce in his aggression towards them as he is attentive
in the fresh annual courtship of his legal lady partner. I assume it's purely biological, to get her in the mood, but I like the thought that he doesn't take her for granted even after they've been together for a few years. He may offer gifts, usually a yellow petal, to other females, but he still remembers to give one as an anniversary present to his wife.

The tiniest birds, like the highly acrobatic Yellow Thornbills, get about in big groups, fussing, fluttering, never sitting still for more than a second, tinkling away to each other. There are so many that even if they stopped for a minute I doubt if I could tell whether they were in pairs or harems. They're more like a handful of yellow-turning leaves being perpetually tossed up in the air to flutter quickly down. However, while they live in groups, apparently couples do peel off for a bit of privacy to reproduce and raise their young—a sort of compromise between communal and nuclear lifestyles.

In others, like the Grey Fantails, the sexes are totally indistinguishable to my eyes. I watch them as they dart about, turning, turning, looking, looking in every direction from under their white eyebrow stripes. They land here and there for a quick proud spin-on-the-spot to spread and display their pretty grey and white tails, and then they're off again. These restless fantails have equality in more than appearance, as they share all the work of parenting and building their interesting nests from spiderwebs and grass, easily identified because the structures are shaped like long-stemmed wine glasses.

With birds, the fancy plumage and the showing off are usually about love or war. Sound familiar?