The Annual Avian Feast
Sarah L. Clark
We’d moved house recently. My partner and I, with our two small children and large grey hound.
At our old home, we’d have an annual visit from a flurry of rainbow lorikeets who would feast on seeds from the large tree - a Radermachera Sinica - overhanging our back deck. Discarded seed pods would rain down on us and trail into the house for the weeks the birds were with us. We’d watch them, up close and personal, sometimes 30 at a time.
My four-year-old would ask why the birds wouldn’t fly down and sit on his shoulder. He wanted to play with them. I had to explain that birds are mostly shy.
The parrots were such a feature in our lives it wasn’t long before our two-year-old surprised us by being able to join the conversation – we shared a video of her chattering about the, “rainbow lolla-keeps”, to anyone we knew would humour the spam.
As we tried our best to feel at home in our new house, something special happened.
“Oliver, quick. Come quietly.”
The rainbow lorikeets had followed us. Resplendent up in our big new tree!
Author Bio: Freelance writer based in Sydney with a focus on brand communications and editorial feature writing.
Instagram.com/sarahlclark