Birds, Me and Mum
What a beautiful response. It is uncanny how you feel that the birds are spiritual. I am fine, feeling better, mood is brighter. My mum is okay too, she has just been moved to rehab to get her up and walking again at 92.
It’s something I thought wouldn’t happen, but am so glad it did.
It means she should get to go home to be cared for by my dad again in time, and watch the Lorikeets, Magpies and Kookaburras that come to be fed morning and afternoon. My parents are bird lovers too.
Red Cardinals are vibrant birds; I adore their head feathers sticking up like a jaunty hat. Feeding the birds like your mother did is wonderful tradition to carry on. Feeding those feathered things is one of my sanity savers. One of my favourite things, something I do every day, each morning and afternoon no matter what.
That’s why the fires were so devastating, I couldn’t go outside for 5 days with chronic asthma when they were raging near our house. I stopped bird watching, feeding, watering and photography, then started fire watching instead. Silly thing to do when the birds are so much better for my mental health.
I’m in an Australian Facebook group called Crap Bird Photography. It is a huge international community of birders, bird feeders, professional photographers, nature lovers, concerned environmentalists and backyard birdwatchers from 25 different countries. There is no politics, no dead pics, only canvassing the worst photos we all take of glorious wild birds. Not everyone submits photos, some just log on for a laugh or a crazy instance of super fast flash fiction.
When our bushfires were raging and I wasn’t sleeping or functioning because of worry, hundreds of members were concerned about me. It was sad and beautiful. The CBP members, many who sell their pro photos in Australia, rallied like a community of friends to offer support.
Other members made hundreds of sheep skin and soft flannel joey pouches to send to the koala and wildlife sanctuaries. Not just donating, but having all day sewing bees to make things to help those species who have lost their habitat. It’s amazing to see the effort city dwellers went to in order to help people and creatures in vast tracts of country devastated in the Australian Bushfire Crisis.
Rain is sprinkling down this morning and Rainbow Bee-eaters are flying through it hawking for insects in the greening lawn. It gives me hope that nature will survive all the horrors that human kind can throw at it. I so want to believe that can happen.
