Birdland

Why look down when you can look up? The sky is home to some of my favourite beings – birds. Symbolic to me of ultimate freedom, I am entranced by their arrow-head flying formations, particularly at dawn or sunset when they seem to be inkily etched against the sky.

The Country Mouse and I once had a reflective conversation about life, death and the hereafter. Deciding that we would put our ambivalence about reincarnation aside, we speculated what form we would take if we revisited Earth again. The Country Mouse’s return plans had a particularly feline and particularly male fantasy bent, best not elaborated on here, but for me there was no question. I would be coming back as an albatross.

Who wouldn’t want to fly, to soar, to defy gravity and to do it with effortless ease and grace? I understand why Icarus ignored all those warnings from his Dad and once he was airborne just kept flying ever higher.

I especially love Australian birds - Bellbirds, Whipbirds, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Kookaburras. Bellbirds evoke strong childhood memories of car trips to visit my maternal grandparents who lived on the Central Coast. The final stretch of what seemed like, to a child, an interminable car ride was a sharp descent on a winding mountain road and it was here that we always heard Bellbirds.

“Listen! Bellbirds!” my mother would exclaim animatedly (hence the previous exclamation marks) and then start reciting, or urging my sister and I to recite, the opening stanza of the Henry Kendall poem ‘Bell-Birds’.

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,

And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:

It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges

Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.

Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers

Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;

And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,

The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

There is something to be said about rote learning, as educationally discredited as it now is, as I can still almost recite that opening verse word-for-word. And despite my intense dislike of rhyming couplets there is something enchanting about the whole poem; in particular the line ‘the notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing’ just rolls off the tongue.

Bellbirds, which are technically called Bell Miners (and more technically called Manorina melanophrys), are honeyeaters endemic to south-eastern Australia. They were given their colloquial name ‘Bellbird’ because they feed almost exclusively on the dome-like coverings of certain bugs, called ‘bell lerps’, but also (and I think this is the real reason) because of their bell-like call. No loners, Bellbirds live in a large, complex social group - which is nice - I don’t want to feel that Bellbirds are lonely out there in the bush.

The final stretch from Sydney to the Country Mouse’s house takes me along a stretch of local highway with bushland right up to the bitumen. By this time I usually have the pedal to the metal, zooming along and grateful for this final fast stretch and its 90 k.p.h. speed limit. With my mind distracted by thoughts of an imminent County Mouse-City Mouse reunion and the music pumping I am oblivious to the world outside.

But on my last trip up I was in a cruiser mood. The music was off and I was taking in my surroundings as I drove, trying to consciously practice some Buddhist mindfulness. As I was doing my Zen-like best to be present in the moment what should I hear through my open window? Bellbirds.