My Misty Mountain Home
And the flitty things that fly there.
Waking before six this morning, I looked out the window to see the valleys that surround our mountain shrouded in fog, in clouds, in a ghostly mist.
Outside, the sun an age to rise. Eight-thirty and the orange glow still hadn’t crept over the mountains.
Clouds drizzled all yesterday, my resident Currawong looked uncomfortable and cold in the wet.
All the birds looked bedraggled, half drowned as if they weren’t the same sleek feathered things I saw last weekend.
I watched as all kinds of unidentifiable birds flew through the fog. I could tell Rosellas by their chirps; Noisy Friarbirds by their gurgles and chuckles.
Welcome Swallows sat in pairs on a roof dripping with moisture, squeaking out a celebration of the small fall of rain.
The birds were too indistinct in the pea soup of morning. Seeing their torpedo shapes glide through mist has to be one of nature’s best winter gifts.
I didn’t come in until after nine when I’d run out of camera battery. Not many bird pics. A sodden juvenile Grey Shrike Thrush; a Magpie feasting on dozens of worms that came to the surface of our dead brown lawn.
Once the sunlight hit the trees a Cockatoo drank dew from gum leaves.
Before I came in for breakfast, I saw a Willie Wagtail jumping on the lawn. Culling the photos on my laptop, I noticed a few sprigs of green in our grass.
In 8 weeks it has rained less than 2 cm; not even one of the 20 inches of rain we get on average each year. Nothing to break the ‘worst drought in living memory’, but enough to prompt the lawn to try and regrow a few hours later.
Nature wants to thrive. It takes everything climate change, global warming and plastic-addicted, habitat-destroying humans can throw at it while offering new life in return.
It’s amazing how everything shines after a rain shower.
I live on a farm in the mountains in a house my husband built on a big hill with a cliff on one side. The 360-degree views from our house are stunning.
On misty winter mornings when clouds rise, drift and disappear like ghosts that never were, my home is lovely.
I really like it here; I’m fairly sure the birds do too.
