BY ROBERT CATTO
If you’ve been reading my essays for a while now, you might know a bit about my family in Canada—the birders of Southern Ontario, that’s them.
One of my sisters sent me a photo of the decorations going on their tree this year over there, which naturally enough included a lot of bird-related ornaments, gathered over many years. My dad and my uncle used to have a boxing day tradition of shopping for new ornaments, so the collection was pretty expansive by the time we were kids—and we had to be a bit careful around all that Czechoslovakian blown glass, I can tell you. But I think we did okay; most of it survives and is still being used by them & their own (careful!) kids today.
Not having kids, a tree, or ornaments here in Sydney myself, I decided to do pretty much the opposite of what I usually do for one of these essays: I took my longest lens, and my largest camera, and went looking for actual birds I could capture, and send to my mum over in a wintry lockdown in Toronto, to give her a bit of colour and summer light to enjoy for a while.
It’s not much, really; but at least I felt like I was doing something from here. It’s hard being away from family, as so many of us are finding at the moment, whether they’re near or far; and especially having lost our dad in February this year, it’s tough going into Christmas with him missing—especially for her, on her own in the apartment they shared for the past few years.
I thought maybe I’d be lucky enough to get a full 12-days-of-Christmas type of collection, but, well…there were a lot of pigeons. And a fair number of cormorants, which I know she’s not really a fan of. And swans don't really count as exotic birds from afar, so I doubt she’ll be too impressed with those.
(I’d love to say I can identify the rest of these by their size, shape, and colour; but I’m not that much of a birder…!)
The one I was really hoping to find proved the most elusive, though—one of our smaller local parrots, the Rainbow Lorikeet, often tends to hang around at the very tops of the trees, meaning they’re mostly out of sight, even if I can hear them from the ground. But, I managed to spot a couple hopping around closer by, and stayed with this one until he found a good meal, swinging himself from the bottom of the branch to reach some berries, before zipping off again with a shriek.
And maybe that’s 2020, in a nutshell: we take whatever small wins we can get—and just hope the swans aren’t too mean.
All the best to everyone who follows this collective, for the holiday season and the coming year. Here’s hoping it brings better things than the past 12 months have…!
