Jagun Nature Reserve, winter blossom

Aug 4

We have been birding early with friends in our forest. One path is underwater. There hasn’t been much rain lately but the mouth is blocked by the beach. A storm or large amount of rain will open the creek up again.

Plenty of winter blossom for the honeyeaters. This Forest Red Gum in flower, attracting heaps of Yellow-faced and Lewin’ Honeyeaters and White-naped Honeyeaters (rare here, passing through). The forest resounds to Varied Trillers, Catbirds, Wrens, an Eastern Robin, Golden Whistler, Whip Birds, a few Grey Fantails and noisy White-cheeked Honeyeaters.
When we reach the beach and boy-blue sea, a Little Tern flies right at us a couple of metres above our head, a well-dressed trim bird, looking left then right.

I missed an Osprey floating over the Banksia scrub, got back to cook a full English breakfast (including smoked trout), breakfast can be an extravagance.

There’s the sky, well half a sky, the rest covered by the house and it’s not my world, it belongs to birds and aeroplanes and missiles. I am underneath eating a mandarin, our friends have gone. I’am reading an article on David Storey, a working-class writer from the north living in London, overflowing with anxieties and uncertainties and even nightmares. I find it surprisingly depressing. Finish it, and take off my reading glasses. How did I get here?

The Tallowwood is marked by flowers, a Jezebel flies around – the frogmouth is tucked in by the trunk, hidden for now by wattle blossom, but out of sight about ten metres below. Swallows zip by at head height and then I notice a raptor, much higher, gliding towards me, broad wings flat, hardly any movement, so relaxed. When it flies over the garden I recognise it’s a Square-tailed Kite, suddenly changing shape, looking awkward, one wing folded. I expect it to stall and fall out of the sky, it vanishes over the roof. I don’t understand my eyes.