The sour-grass and the wattles were out by mid-July. For a week we could see the loosened wattles converging, like a flooded carpet in the middle of the high river.
It has livened up a long, dull winter, if you ask me. I like those frosty mornings and sunny winter days and we haven’t had many of them over winter. More often than not, days have been cloudy and cool with plenty of rain at times. Call me picky but I prefer crisp to damp.
So it’s finally been looking up and everyone is coming to the party. The magpies in the gums near the gate are getting fidgety and eyeing me off in that threatening way they do when there’s nesting happening; a new pair of swallows have fashioned a neat mud house in the rafters of the garage and the wrens are busy carting twigs into the hedge.
On the river, it’s like someone flicked a switch. The grey shrike-thrushes are working up to full song while a mob of grey teal turned up at the billabong on Sunday to add their cackling chatter to the frogs’ orchestra.
There’s a few black-faced cuckoo-shrikes about and they seem early too — The Boss and I mostly see them at Shepparton Show time, when the bee-eaters arrive.
The king parrots are calling in most days to stir up the flocks of red rumps and rosellas.
The mornings are like the battle of the bands, with the kookaburras shouting at the cockatoos and corellas, the mountain ducks honking their way up and down the river, the ibis grunting as they leave their high perches to head out for the day and the herons squawking on the sandbar when New Boy and I make an appearance.
Then there’s the mob of white-winged choughs, all about the size and colour of a raven but with bright red eyes and a distinctive piping call like nothing else.
They spend most of their day walking, poking around in the leaves looking for insects, beetles and snails and they seem a sociable mob, often up to 15 or more in the group; when one of them finds something interesting, it calls out and the others all come running.
The other birds that walk most of the time are the painted buttonquail — a largish quail that frequents the river floodplain and we’ve had a covey in our patch ever since I can remember.
They provide some entertainment for New Boy, who hasn’t yet realised he can never catch them, and he sneaks along like a soft-stepping dancer once he picks up their scent.
When he gets too close they all suddenly erupt with a loud whirring of wings and he jerks up in temporary fright.
Which is pretty much what he does now when he comes close to a wriggly. New Boy had two shots at snake avoidance training but he didn’t need the second one — which I could have told him.
Which reminds me, my mate Steph from GV Pet Adoption is organising snake avoidance training sessions for September 16. You can give her a call on 0417 654 531. Woof!
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