Under the casuarina trees I breathe

Without pausing how do we know where we are at?

Full Moon at Dawn

I am now becoming established in a new routine, A ritual of self care.

It is good! I feel good! 

At dawn I write, I exercise I gaze at the sea and I listen to the sounds of the Black Cockatoos feeding their chicks on tiny Casuarina nuts. 

 I do not worry! 

Welcome Visitor

Yesterday in the morning when I returned from my ride Sam let out an excited exclamation...
WoW! Look at that!

A Great Egret had landed in our yard.

Amazing, beautiful bird! 
I don't know what drew him to our yard but it's existence is a blessing.

On my ride this morning a butterfly (Varied Eggfly I think) brushed through my hair... later along the dark forest track an Emerald Dove rand ahead of me looking for an exit through the thick brush. It's wings matching the new growth on vine forest trees.

With all the sham and destruction on this earth today, I felt a brief reprieve, a momentary connection to the vanishing treasures of the earth.  My heart grasps at the moments hoping sanctuary can exist.

 

There are beautiful creatures living on the fringes of our domain, sadly the fringes at every point in every location are under an unrelenting assault. Fire, flood, land clearing, poison... They are being consumed, quickly now the ball is rolling.

Morning coast ride

After quite a good weekend camping and generally being away from 'The World', the sham and whatnot, I found myself awake at 5:30am. 

For the past week I've been taking the company car home, so have missed my daily bicycle commute. 

After breakfast and coffee I still had about two hours before I was due at the office. Plenty of time for a lap of the Coastal track.

Entering the Muirhead Estate the air was relatively cool. I cycled east, directly toward the enormous blazing orange glow of the Sun as it breached the horizon, smoke haze defused the light allowing me to gaze directly into the broiling globe. It was as if I could actually sense it's mass levitating in the sky just out of reach. Before long the light became too intense and I had to shade my eyes and look away.

On a patch of unmolested native scrub I noticed the white flowers of a native Gardenia (megasperma?). I had once fallen in love with one of these and had tried to protect the plant only to see it crushed under tons of earth which had been piled up after local land developers had cleared the site. I spent 15 minutes just admiring the tree, it's form and habit are quite rugged but delicate, a bit like a sculpted frangipani tree with terminal leaves and bright sweet smelling flowers, the bark has a soft yellowish hue that makes it seem quite out of place in the Savannah woodland. 

Approaching Buffallo creek I passed an older man about to start a hike, possibly into town along the coastal path, he had a small pack and his woman was kissing him farewell. It touched me to see this tender moment, I smiled at them and the woman smiled back. With one look she slew the miserable cynic on my shoulder.

The beach was now in full light, I moved on from the WWII bunker, allowing some space between the hiker and myself. Mornings like this are for solitude, nobody wants to be crowded in such places. Timeless, open, free of obligation. Whatever demands they might wish to impart or impose are dead while the sleepers snooze.

Morning Glory (Ipomoea pes-caprae)

As I roll past a particularly lovely stand of Casuarina's I noticed a tight clump of Beach Morning Glory (Ipomoea pes-caprae). Every time I pass this way the beach lures me to stop and rest. it's at a spot just beyond the point at Lee Point facing North East. There is a good energy.

 

There is a Kingfisher in this image, too small to see

After cycling along the sadly denuded monsoon vine forest I took the mangrove trail toward Casuarina Beach, entering the mangroves from the dry and open savanna is like stepping into another dimension. The sound of a black butcher Bird rang out as soon as I crossed that line. The tide was coming in and I stopped to watch small fish swarming in the shallow stream under the bridge. A jewel of blue flashed by my face, I followed it's path as it landed on the areal roots of a mangrove further down the creek. It was an Azure Kingfisher! So happy to be here right now.

Time was ticking away so I took the Rockland's drive trail back past the hospital and on to Vanderlyn. 

I was cruising under the powerlines headed toward Hibiscus shops when I spotted a curious looking creature strutting across the grass towards me.

Chooky Coming back for another chat

I stopped and re-focused my eyes. A chook! A little red chicken was making it's way straight for me. I stood still and waited for her to arrive, thinking any movement would scare her off. No chance! She came straight up to me and started clucking and looking for food. Poor thing must have been lost. I had a brief chat with her to reassure her that she'd be OK so long as she stayed off the road. Meanwhile a jogger passed and had a bit of a chuckle at the affair. 

By now I knew I would need to keep moving if I wanted to be at work on time. Something deep inside me said.... Nothing... Absolutely nothing, the thought of work passed, the moment was just too perfect. I remained peacefully in the company of the chicken until she decided to continue her foraging, then I naturally continued my ride. Not thinking about work, not thinking about time, not imagining what I would should could or must do... Just rolling along as God intended.

Around D town

Got back from Melbourne last week.
Just trying to fit back into the Darwin scene... Work/family/etc...

Have seen a heap of unusual wildlife lately.

Frilled Lizard in the yard,

Green frogs in my bike

 Jabiru at the School

Red-backed Wrens on the way to work
dead pythons on the road

Fischer's Love Bird in the park 

Big Grouper (Cod? Flowery Cod?) in the sea

Managed to get some photos, not all.

Have a nice week.

Gooses

I like living in the Top End of the NT.

It's still a rather wild and beautiful place. In Darwin you can see sights that you couldn't even imagine existing in other capital cities. Which other city in Australia could you get off a plane and see a wild dingo trotting through the scrub before you even exit the airport? Or attend a funeral service at which traditional aboriginal ceremony takes precedence over the a christian religious service? Which other cities would you have to avoid flooded urban creeks, not so much for the danger of being washed away but because of the likelihood of a crocodile snatching you from where you stand!

There are all kinds of interesting and wonderful aspects to living in Darwin in the tropical north, one of them I am not too keen on is the wasteful slaughter of wildlife.

As a bird lover I feel spoiled living in Darwin. The variety of species right here in the city still blows me away. Even sitting at my front porch I am likely to see three species of finch while I sip my morning coffee. There are Curlews and Blue winged kookaburras, all kinds of birds of prey, birds which in the state of my birth I would have considered exotic. 

A trio of geese taking a spell in the park across the road from where I live

One species we have which is quite unusual is the Magpie goose. They are a goose but quite a primitive looking species. They have some fascinating social habits as part of their breeding cycle, one male often cares for two females. They have a very pretty black and white plumage, long legs and a very peculiar looking head, which has a bump at the top that grows larger with age (a very odd looking thing).

Magpie goose is a favorite food source for Aboriginal people and is also popularly taken by non indigenous hunters. This time of year (The wet season). At this time of year some people get very excited to have the opportunity to eat fresh goose. On more than one occasion over the past couple of weeks I have seen people sitting by the side of the road plucking geese, one woman was even sitting at a bus stop, surrounded by a pile of feathers, plucking a goose as she waited for the bus! That was an odd sight.

Ironically the geese migrate into town during hunting season. I wonder if this is because they know there is no hunting permitted within town borders.

Killed geese left to rot next to rubbish dumped outside the tip

 
I appreciate that it is a game bird and it is possible to manage a sustainable harvest of birds from year to year but it breaks my heart to see the way they are treated as a purchasable commodity. There are places around Darwin you can go to buy dead geese, I have even been asked by people who live in Arnhem Land, to purchase geese from someone in Darwin! 

Worse than the buying and selling of this species as food is the number of dead geese that appear, shoved into rubbish bins dumped in bushland or even left by the side of the road! White hunters prefer the softer fleshy meat from the breast of the bird so they cut them off and leave the rest to rot! Sometimes I find whole birds dumped probably because the hunter had taken more than they needed and had no means of cooking or refrigerating the meat. Either way I find it a horrible part of life in Darwin and a disgusting abuse of a native species.

Counting Birds

My family and I have had a great time participating in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count 

I installed the app on my phone and have really enjoyed trying to squeeze as many species as I can into the 20 minutes allocated for each count session.

The total number of species I counted, just within the immediate vicinity of my house was:

Three species of finches we've sighted in our garden
(drawing courtesy of D. Baxstar 'Outside The Box'

Having taken the time to sit for 20 minutes each morning and just look at the birds around me, I know I am blessed! Australia has so much wildlife but for a capital city (OK a very small one) Darwin has a lot more species diversity than many people would realise. 
During my 20 minute bird counts spending most of my time sitting on a chair at my front porch I managed to count 26 species of birds! 

Screenshot of my stats... unfortunately I couldn't include the full list.

  
I have learned a few things during this bird count. Firstly, in the long period between now and my enthusiastic days of regular bird watching my ability to identify bird species has diminished monstrously! My eyesight isn't what it used to be so I am having to get the binoculars out in order to correctly identify birds I should know at a glance and I have found that I can hear the very distinctive calls and songs of birds all around me, just out of sight which I can't for the life of me identify! It's a disgrace!

So! That's it! I've decided to get serious! I'm reading up on all my local species and am looking for a good birdsong database to download, apparently they now make some pretty decent apps to put on your phone! Oh yeh and for inspiration the whole family is going to sit down and watch that awesome birding movie The Big Year. COOL!

October

It was October...
I watered the garden and saw a butterfly...
I am grateful for the birds too.

A butterfly in my garden

Magpie Geese in the park

A new Home

Damnit! I missed a whole month (more) of blogging.
Too busy, working and moving and working and moving and working.... literally...

A week of logistical management, cooking, cleaning, driving, booking flights and all that... followed by a couple of weeks of trying to shift 17 years worth of life into another house, consoling wife and kids along the way.... followed by another week and a half of 15 hours or more per day of the same kind of logistical stuff I do for a living, followed by, what I thought would be a break but turned out to be a combination of helping a friend move house and sorting out logistical crap unexpectedly for work again... There were some ordinary moments in amongst it which I owed my family since I'd accrued a serious time debt...

And now here I am somewhere down the line in the middle of July and finally get a chance to sit at my computer and I'm so stuffed all I can post is a picture of a blue winged kookaburra on the clothes line of my new place... and the Double barred finch who's eggs he stole!

Bird in a cage

Last year a friend asked if my kids would like to take care of his 2 budgies Kelvin and... I forgot the other birds name, she's gone now.

We were reluctant to take the birds but wanted to help him out and I thought it would be good for the kids to have first hand experience of taking care of a bird.

As a teenager I didn't really relate to people very well and preferred to spend time in the wild, watching birds, fishing and that sort of thing. At some point I managed to convince my parents to let me keep some birds and before long I had completely overwhelmed them. From the age of about 14 I started to breed various species of birds, then by the time I was 20 I'd practically turned half my parents back yard into a network of aviaries and cages. I always wanted to create as close to as natural and diverse space as possible... but in fact all I did was keep a whole lot of birds in a big cage! 

I preferred native species but I remember having a pair of Cuban finches which were so small the male would continually get out of the aviary, but his bond was so strong to the female that he'd always stick around and fly back into the aviary when I opened the door. In my fantasy world this is exactly how it would be. I would keep the birds but they'd be free to fly around the unfenced boundary of our yard... I remember at the beginning of High School I read a book called Birdy by William Wharton (A good read for a maladjusted teen)....  The main character in the story, who had been kind of obsessed with birds, became psychologically unhinged when he served in the second world war and regressed into an imaginary world. Some how I related to this kind of disturbing story and have to admit I often retreated into a similar fantasy world with the birds.

Calvin and Crystal in a cage

When I left home my parents gave the birds away and had the aviaries removed. I didn't mind, it was a hobby which got out of control and actually at the time I was kind of ambivalent about keeping the birds locked up but had not devised an exit plan and the poor creatures just kept breeding.

Something inside me knew it wasn't right but I just kept making the space bigger and the birds kept breeding and so on. I never really got that much appreciation of just sitting and watching the birds. I had 'collected'.

These days I have no interest in keeping any creature in a cage! I can't stand it on multiple levels. Firstly to see an animal reduced to complete dependance on human beings for their basic survival is not at all inspiring to me. Maybe when I was younger I liked the idea of them relying on me, at least in the life of a budgie or cockatiel waiting to be fed my life had some bearing. Maybe it helped me through a difficult time in my life or even taught me some lessons about responsibility etc...

I won't go into the trials and dramas of keeping the birds, but we did lose one bird and ended up replacing her with another from the pet shop rather than see Kelvin be completely lonely. Then Yesterday the Krystal (Kelvin's new partner) got out of the cage while I was trying to transfer her. That's when I realized I actually can't do this. I have no business keeping these creatures in cages! I'm feeling like to keep animals now is just a bit too close to playing God right now it's not something I really want to be playing at.

 

If you have a bird in a cage I bet you've got a few photos of the bird. Have you ever wondered why the photos look so drab? I was looking at Calvin alone in his cage and it dawned on me. We love these animals, we are fascinated by their antics and watching them go about just being themselves, inside the cage... But when we watch them we rarely consider their containment, only the joy we get from watching them and we like to think they are happy. But the camera catches the moment without the subjective lens of the human imagination, often focusing on the wire rather than the bird.

When Crystal got out she flew away, she would have had no idea where she was going, how to find food or even how to get back to the 'safety of her cage'.

Wild birds I sometimes see

These days I hate visiting zoos or places where animals are held on display. I am surrounded by wild creatures and love to watch them in their natural habitat, fully alive and free.

Thudering Insomnia

Weeks of Insomnia,

Bad news, Back pain etc...

I searched my Soul and found it wanting...

Determined to find the point of it all and came up with zilch! 

Letting go of illusions, expectations and beliefs leaves very little to cling to when I ask what's it all about?

Lately I have been desperate for solitude and as much space and time to myself as I can steal... 

There is developing in me a strong aversion to company.

But like most people I have commitments to family and work which must be met. So on life roles and in spare moments I slink in to a quiet corner to consider... "What next?" 

Needing to get out of our fetid unit we gathered the kids and went down to the foreshore where the kids could play and my wife and I could look out on the sea and get some peace. My heart felt lighter, no one demanding anything of me I could just watch nature in action and breathe. There was a large flock of small migratory birds roosting on the rocks. So beautiful, wild and completely free! A tonic for a troubled soul.
Then people started to notice, a couple holding hands, lovers looking for a romantic photo... a man and his son exploring the rock pools, a family out for a picnic. They were all excited by the flurry of feathers, all those birds taking flight. So of course the birds did take flight and each time they attempted to land the people would approach them and cause them to fly again. The birds may have flown many thousands of kilometers to arrive on that beach and at high tide there were very few other places to roost. They were forced into the air time after time while the ignorant (yes naive) destructive humans enjoyed the spectacle of so many birds in the air. And I wondered... With so little of the natural world remaining in tact, will we ever learn to appreciate it as it is? Or will we always be guided by our own selfish desires, putting our dumb curiosity first?

People enjoying the spectacle of birds in flight

Woken at midnight by a violent thunderstorm, demons bashing about causing the windows to shake in their frames and the dog, senile and half cripple,whimpered and farted as she clawed her way under my bed. 

I know I should be more understanding but I tell her to fuck off and leave me alone!

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

By 1am I realized that tonight was not going to be my night for sleeping. Turned on the laptop and flicked through my dvd collection. I considered a few films but found it hard to choose one... for some reason I kept glancing at 'Midnight Cowboy' I'm already depressed why would I want to watch that? But after the 4th glance I took the dvd out if it's cover and stuck it in the machine.

Sometimes when you're down it helps to look at life not from the street view but from the gutter! The film is full of the pain and self doubt I have been feeling lately. It didn't leave me feeling uplifted at all but at least somebody bothered to express this in film! 

‘…People stopping, staring
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes…’

(Harry Nilsson) 

You want a coffee?

On Days like this music blasts through pain to fill my soul, the lyrics are an arch and tunes I could never have created or imagined into being propel me through in absolute rawness and bitter joy pass through me! I stagger about misty eyed full of rapture and simultaneously my own impotence. What I cannot express cannot do. Nothing original, nothing real just an insignificant fractured half entity clenching desperately to stolen Clichés 

Now I'm going for a walk, on my headphones is Dire Straits One world

"...They say it's mostly vanity
That writes the plays we act
They tell me that's what everybody knows
There's no such thing as sanity
And that's the sanest fact

That's the way the story goes..."


That's the way it goes!