A beautiful thing

There is a beautiful thing about animals that I am sure readers who have the privilege to observe wild animals closely and make friendships with them will have also observed: we give them little things like food, that cost us next to nothing, for a long time they will they have no chance to give anything back; but when they do get that chance, they give everything they have.

Our grey-backed butcherbird Larry has a territory that doesn't include our yard, so day after day, I call Larry from the fence, he flies out of the bush, takes a piece of cheese, and flies away. And I do this every day I am home. But one day, when a huge snake (eight to ten feet long) was advancing towards our house, he flew out of his territory into our yard to join the magpies and noisy miners making up a vanguard to repel the snake from our house, all the birds risking their lives to keep our house safe.  To view a slideshow of a trip to Larry and Harrie's nest click here. 

Another example: one year, when Vicky had two bubs who had some problem with their voices (they are normally very loud, and these two could hardly make a sound), she was very worried, and she hid them in a remote corner in the bush. We wanted to get a look at them, and we went towards Vicky's hiding place. Then, when we were about two hundred yards away, we had second thoughts, and decided that it would worry Vicky too much if we went any further. So we turned around and started back.

But Vicky had other ideas. She flew towards us, and, at our waist height, she flew in a very slow arc around us, cutting off our retreat, and went back behind us and sat on the grass behind. The message couldn't have been clearer: "Yes," she was saying, "I am worried about my bubs, but not because of you. You can come up and see them." And she was so happy, and it was such a blessing to be invited in such a fashion to visit the babies of a nervous wild bird worried about its offspring. No royalty could bestow a greater honour, and nothing is clearer in my memory than that act of love. Vicky, remember, grew up in the deep bush where there are no human beings at all, and we were the first ones she had ever met. That is quite a bit different from city magpies who get very used to people and can get very confident.

I am sure that anyone can have such experiences with animals if one stays open to understand their messages. They can't talk, but they know how to get ideas across to those who really want to communicate.