Enchantment …

Birds enchant me. Their habits, their calls, their look. It always sparks my imagination, and it is not long before they have a name and personality all of their own. This comes along with stories, actions and reactions. You have Kind Charles the Stonechat, or Mavrick and Goose, the Cape Sparrows and of course, Leeroy the Afrochook and Maurice the Magnificent (said with a French accent and lots of hand signals).

Every morning while I sit quietly writing my morning pages and thinking and planning the day ahead, the heartbeat of Whyteleaf Cottage begins. The cooing of the doves in the trees overhead. Sometimes distant and gentle sometimes closer to home and more incessant, desperate even. But always the minutes during the active sunrise all is quite just to begin again – the repetitive call of the doves settle over the garden like a gentle anchor. A steady rhythm holding the world in place for the day ahead. Shattered occasionally by the hadada’s as they take off and want to let the farm know their movements. They do not believe in stealth or secrecy.

The antithesis of this is the chirping of the sparrows as they go about their chattering. Short little bursts of information – more of a business memo than a long explanation. The seaason is changing the mornings are cooler (to down right cold) and darker. to open the front doors is a sacrifice I am willing to make as the two resident sparrows Mavrick and Goose, in perfect formation, fly in. This tight squadron burst through the open doorway, wings cutting the air with sharp precision. They moved as one—banking, dipping, and weaving in perfect harmony—like fighter pilots on a low sweep, each bird instinctively holding its line, adjusting in a blink, turning chaos into choreography. They have recced a hole in the corner of the thatch above the door frame. After a few mornings of harmonious chatter and exploration, A N Other lady sparrow venturesd into the room and disturbed the equilibrium, now Goose is seldom allowed in the front room and if he does come inside the noise levels increase drastically. Mavrick continues to come inside but all alone and chirps away sitting inside on the door handle calling and calling. Goose however remains steadfast and calls from outside the house, no longer exploring inside. Mavrick has got himself very well acquinted with the layout of the house and flies in the front door and out the back. Maybe is a window is open he might take an early exit or a rest on the burglar bar. And if there is no exit for him he will find a perch high in the rafters and chirp away until I walk through and open up for him.

The dusty farmyard on Kia Ora was a place of adventure and exploration. The lines of old farm equipment brought out once a season was always a place that stimulated the imagination. Abus driver as I sat on the old tractor pushing the pedals and shouting out the various “stops” at the same time concentrating as I drive through the heavy traffic and the end of a busy day, climbing high on the feed sacks and planting a flag as I would do at the top of a mountain or making a home in the hay bales. But all was not always peaceful across the orchard. Rooster was always about keeping an eye on his ladies ready to protect them from any danger. He was a master in causing conflicting emotions, a mix of instict and awareness. Your body reacts before your mind could fully object. You were caught between two realities laughing while totally commited to the escape and then when you are safely a top the old potatoe lifter you giggle with amusement and a tad embarresment. Rooster was an Old English Game rooster , a breed originally bred for cock fighting and known for their feisty temperament. He was King of the farmyard and took his job very seriously. There were many a long afternoon when life was seeming to slow for us children when we would purposely tease Rooster and escape as if our lives depended on it. This feeling of a heigtened state of panic was also brought on by teasing Kojak – my mothers bull dog around the house and encouraging him to chase us. Jumping from bed to bed and occasionally the dressing table brought about many hysterics and wild laughter. There is nothing like that feeling when you know you are physically safe from harm and you can just enjoy that rush of a “life threatening” moment. I took this “chasing by a farm animal” a bit far when years late3r, I was chased by an Beefmaser bull through the railing walkways at an animal sale, but to far less hysterics and absollutely no teasing.

Its amazing how little things make me smile. a perfectly clean freshly laid egg, the duck footprints in the mud, the wasy the ducks waddle and sqwaak as they run into their pen at night, Mavrick and Goose greeting me as I head out for my mid morning coffee onto the deck, but one thing really made me chuckle. One Christmas we were throwing away some old beer and tipping it into the garden making a bit of a dam. Later that morning we noticed the Black Headed Oriole acting really strangly and he fell of the branch and he fluttered down to the groiund like an autumn leaf. The poor chap had found our dam of alchol before it had soaked into the ground. And as alcohol does to everyone his judgement was impaired.

Our driveway is a mixture of evenly spaced Plein trees, a blackthorn jungle, damaged poplar trees and old brittle willow trees, the perfect places for the Woodpeckers to search for tasty treats. On my walks I stop, follow the noise and find one hard at work. Jumping from branch to branch till it finds a succulent snack and gets them out using its sticky tongue. Then of course there are my constant companions, the Green Wood Hoopoe. Following me on my walk as they nip between the avenue in a gregarious flock of three or four. Chattering and gossiping the daily news as they go. When they have shared the news of the day they swoop off. They have not been nicknamed as laughing washerwomen for nothing. This bubbling cascade of sharp metallic chuckle rise and fall in bursts. Their calls tumble over one another like a waterfall animated laughter through the tree branches. This compared to the lone drongo who follows me with short bursts in the trees above. Like our bulldog it follows closely on my heels. Its job only done, I enter the gate to the house, and then it veers off to carry on with its days business.

Only one name but at least three characters. I am talking about the Sacred Ibis. Montgomery Marshwalker or Monty to his friends, strutting around the salt flats on Thesen Island in Knysna, glides through life with the serene confidence of someone whose biggest concern is whether the crew remembered to chill the champagne. Cool and collected while preening himself and all the while oozing that calm insouciance to his swagger. The rest of the birds on the salt flats hum quietly the words for Carly Simon’s song “you’re so vain” to themselves as he passes. The resident sea gulls show no fear as Monty struts past, and so there is no quiet hum to their song.

Thursdays is garbage collection day on thesen Island and this brings out another character sharing the Sacred Ibis family, Lord Dumpster III. Muttering to himself “one more day, one more half eaten sandwich” as he scrounges, exhausted through the garbage. LDIII has been totally frazzled by life, one questionable decision after another and the horizon does not look much better from where he is perched. His white feathers are no longer quite white, carrying a faint dusting of grime and mystery stains. The shaggy black plumes at the back of his neck stick out at odd angles, giving the impression that he woke up late and skipped grooming altogether. His long, down-curved bill, a dull black with marks and scares, probes relentlessly through overflowing refuse bags with the focus of a veteran treasure hunter who has learned that one person’s trash is, in fact, lunch. When LDIII is disturbed, he doesn’t fly away just relocates with mild irritation, muttering in ibis. Moments later he is back at work, neck stretched, bill deep in another bag, utterly convinced that the next great find lies just beneath the surface.

He arrives each morning without announcement, stepping down into the silage pit as though attending to an appointment made long ago. Barley Silas moves at an unhurried pace, placing each foot carefully among the sweet-smelling silage. While the swallows dart and the starlings squabble overhead, he simply strolls. There is no rush. Barley seems to understand that the day will unfold as it always does, and that food, weather, and opportunity all arrive in their own time. His white plumage catches the early light, and his long curved bill points slightly downward, giving him the appearance of an old philosopher considering a question not worth answering aloud. He pauses often—not because he is uncertain, but because he appears to be paying attention. A beetle stirs, a breeze changes direction, a tractor starts in the distance. Nothing escapes his notice. He belongs here without ever seeming to own it.W hen he finds a morsel among the silage, there is no triumph, no scramble. He simply takes it Then he continues his measured walk, carrying himself with the quiet confidence of a bird who has learned that panic seldom improves the outcome. Droughts, floods, harvests, failures, and good years, he has lived them all and he offers no advice, yet somehow embodies it:

work in progress …