I Shoot Lorikeets

L was a bird lover and she has had many birds visiting on a regular basis for food.  Lorikeets, butcher birds, and magpies. Kookaburras are not welcome as apparently the fly into the house.  The lorikeets have outworn their welcome too - as they have plentiful and messy bowel motions that they deposit with gay abandon on the deck requiring frequent cleaning up.

My instructions are to use a water bottle and shoot water at them if they congregate in anticipation of food - which they are now banned from taking from the bird feeder.  And so I have on one or two occasions pulled out the water bottle and taking aim, shot a spray of water at the noisy lorikeets.  They look at me with a rather confused and quizzical look.  

The butcher birds are funny.  They line up on the deck and usually when they come, so do a couple of magpies.


There looks to me like the mother and father come, and some offspring.  The photo above was clearly taken from inside the house through the closed door - the bird to the right of the door frame is very cheeky, and he/she is the one that plays "Peepbo" with me.  If I move to the left and he/she cannot see me, he will scuttle along the rail to the left and with his head at a slight angle make eye contact again.  The two birds to the sides of the photo look to be the "baby" birds.  

They sit on the rail and sing.  Sing for their supper?  I've not been given instructions on how much food to give them - and at this point I'm not sure if I've not given them enough, or they have had too much. 

Last night there was only one possum making his presence felt - there was a mad scramble of I think only one, across the roof early in the night.  I slept all night and heard nothing more of the possum dancers.

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