Feathered Friends Come Visiting

“What use is care? What good is watching for that matter? People are forever watching things. They should be seeing. I see the things I look at. I am a see-er.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss

As I sat at my desk on my little office veranda yesterday I had many visitors.

First a kookaburra flew down and sat in the tree outside my window. He looked at me intently and then burst into song.

A little later there was a raucous squawking as a white cockatoo flew overhead, calling to his mate. Both of them flew into an enormous gum tree in our back yard and continued their singing.

Then a squadron of black cockatoos flew overhead.

Those cockatoos always remind me of my Aboriginal Aunties. They stayed for hours, screeching and calling as they flew from tree to tree.

An afternoon storm rolled in, and for a while all the birdsong was drowned out by thunder and rain.

At twilight, as the rain stopped, the air was filled with the final songs of the birds as they settled down for the evening. Magpies, cat birds, kookaburras, cockatoos, finches and honeyeaters all added their music to the sunset.

Then an owl winged down into the tree outside my office, and sat watching me. Same spot as the kookaburra had been.

Keep writing, they seemed to say. Keep planning. You know what you have to do.

We’re watching you…