Hullabaloo

In the late late afternoon I dug and pulled out a patch of weeds in the garden...the day cool and wet was quite different from yesterday's humid and tense pre-storm atmosphere that revealed a savage sun.

Approaching night fall the trees were alive with a range of varieties of amicable birds getting along when there was a screaming cacophony behind me and I turned to look. Two birds were in an out of the loquat tree in that fussy way they do shrill, bumping into each other and seeming to be in a scrap. Suddenly the two sped in my direction so fast I was convinced this time I was a goner. O, my it appeared there was a beginning of a pack behind them so I put down the pick I still had in my hand and turned my back on their advance. Turning, I heard what sounded like a fight and even the call 'Fight! Fight! Fight!'

This was no fight. The two had sped past into the height of the tree at the other end of the yard where I naturally looked. The rest of a pack were arriving singly and in haste. One was a leader and made a screeching, raucous call and the subordinate uttered a raucous rejoinder a split portion of a second behind. Each of the rest of the pack set up a cacophony of their own, seemed to have a different throat yet it was collaboration and an imperative. Each squawked their hearts out as if followers of a superhero they were bound to mimic.

Look at us! We're here! Dinner is HERE tomorrow.

My own heart beat like a drum in my excitement thinking I had caught them red-handed calling the news to ... THE WHOLE GANG IN TOWN ...and driving the black bird with the orange beak away from the freshly dug earth.

I knew the settings were wrong on the camera in my pocket because earlier I practised under-exposure. The zoom seemed inadequate to reach into the tree to tell the story... there are in the vicinity of 6 birds in frame. I managed to catch a glimpse of them for us as the shebang started. They called and left. Evening fell a few minutes later.