6:15 am, I’m feeding Poppy Peahen
outside. The sun isn’t all the way up yet. It’s hard to see the Cockatoos in
the gum. There’s not light enough to count them.
In 2015, Poppy our Peahen ran away. We didn’t see her
for a month. They were weeks of worrying I’d spooked her off. It was because
she’d sat on the back door mat making squidgy do-do and I ended up sitting in it.
I’d just watched ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and was having a good cry at the outcome I already knew. Looking outside, I gasped; holding my hand to my chest as a melodramatic creature from a bonnet drama
might do. Two Wedge-tailed Eagles were copycatting each other, circle gliding in the thermals above our
home. One slowly spiraled down, while the other spun higher in a classic
mirror image.
Late summer-early autumn
is finch time on the farm. They’re cheeping in the yard; it’s the cutest sound
a bird can make. The large family group of Double-barred Finches hop
closer.