Open Writing

My lovable, yet crazy, Yorkshire grandad was both an avid bird watcher and a shockingly bad driver. Being constantly on the lookout for birds meant that his eyes were seldom on the road ahead. He would lurch to a sudden stop, heedless of any traffic which might be behind him, fling the car door open, raise the binoculars (which hung permanently around his neck) and yell excitedly, “Eee, that thar’s a mussel cracker!”

I struggled to match the enthusiasm which he displayed for his feathered friends as I was invariably saddled with his camera and tripod and was usually left to close the car door behind him before it was ripped off by a passing car.

Unperturbed, we would set off again, his comb-over blowing wildly in the wind as he hung half out of the window in his quest for a sighting of the next bird. “By gum, thar’s a buzzard! Them’s a reet rare find, tha naws lass,” he would shriek and we would dodge the muckspreader down the lane, trying to get a closer look.

On one dramatic occasion he smashed the wing indicator of the Morris Minor off on a dry stone wall, demonstrating not only how frighteningly close he was to the wall but also that, in his excitement, he had forgotten to cancel the flicker switch.

Against all odds, I survived these manic journeys, grew to adulthood and unconsciously imbibed a mild interest in birds. When I first emigrated to Australia I would instinctively feel that every bird I saw was an escapee which ought to be in an aviary. This is because Australian birds, on the whole, have vibrant, exotic plumage and are often a parakeet or parrot type bird which, in almost any other country, you would only see in a cage. They do not sing, but indulge in a raucous squawking which announces their whereabouts to fellow birds and humans alike. Put it this way, they are not conducive to a Sunday lie-in.

The rainbow lorikeet is the most common bird in our garden and it is aptly named as it has a plumage of bright blue, purple, red, orange, yellow and green- yes, all on one bird. They are extremely bossy types and one has taken to tapping on the kitchen window, asking for a titbit whenever my husband touches the bread bin. Brave bird. No-one else has ever got anywhere by giving him an insistent, tapping reminder.

I heard of galahs before I ever saw one of these magnificent birds, They strut around like grooms in a wedding suit of pale grey, displaying chests of cerise as if to complement the bridesmaids dresses and humour the bride, whilst their spiky white crests fan out like top hats. The Australians have an insulting expression, “You silly galah”, which is where I first heard of them. Initially I thought that they were stupid birds because they frequently had near misses with the windscreen of my car but I have since learned that they have the intelligence of a five year old child and that they enjoy playing in powerful updrafts or vortices, which, ultimately, may say more about the speed of my driving than the intelligence of the poor, maligned bird.

We have the sulphur crested cockatoos which arrive with the whole, extended family and destroy solar heating pipes, tearing them to shreds with their vice- like beaks. Then there are the currawongs which are notorious for dive bombing unsuspecting pedestrians during the nesting season. Our beleaguered postman wears stegosaurus spikes on his motorbike helmet as a form of defence. There are territorial kookaburras who, although they are kingfishers, have a penchant for red meat over fish and decimate the local lizard population by tenderising them to death with loud thwacks on the rockery wall before swallowing them whole. We also have the plovers whose little black hoods resemble the yarmulkes of the men who pass our home on their way to the nearby synagogue.

Most puzzling of all to me though is the strutting magpie lark which, it turns out, is neither a magpie nor a lark. This does make me wonder, was it named by some respected ornithologist, or (one has to be ever so wary in this country renowned for its leg-pulling) was it, as I suspect, named by a piss-taking, Aussie larrikin who, flying in the face of intelligentsia, has been pulling a fast one on us for decades?