Exotica

In the course of my first cigaret of the day, I saw, in the immediate neighborhood, an ibis, a pair of double-barred finches, several magpie larks, a wagtail, three varieties of honeyeater of various sizes, a pheasant coucal, a couple of raptors, probably kites, circling over the lagoon down the street, heard sulphur-crested cockatoos, koels, & crows.

It's a fairly standard list for these parts. The pheasant coucal is not as regular a visitor as the others, but because it doesn't fly much, preferring to hop/bop its way along low branches or fences, black body but with mottled wings & tail, the latter longer than its body, it tends to stay around for a greater period of time. & the list, depending on the time of day, is supplemented by kingfishers, kookaburras, parrots, other varieties of honeyeater, olive-backed orioles, swallows, pigeons & doves, black cockatoos, kurrawongs. But they're all natives.

Which is why I was surprised to see, when I went up the road to get the Sunday papers, some sparrows on the carpark fence. An exotic sight, x 2. Firstly, they're an imported species, an exotic, brought here by the early European settlers along with rabbits & foxes which have multiplied to become scourges of arable land—rabbits—& of native fauna—foxes. Secondly, unlike every other place I've lived in, they're reasonably rare up here, &, rather than the friendly birds I remember that were happy to live on crumbs of bread, they tend to be quite feral.