Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,29

it and we watch from the window not making the smallest noise to frighten it away.

We saw the thrush on the bird table so much because there are actually two of them. There is a baby thrush and a mother thrush. The baby thrush will take a worm from our teachers hand.

March

To-day there were many crimson rosellas at the bird table. Our teacher calls them red lories. They have strong beaks and are a great bane of life for our fruit growers. All of the birds are happy when there are rosy tips in the sky.

Yesterday mother thrush hopped through the window. She flew around the classroom. The boys stood on the desks and took the model of the solar system down in case she got tangled in it. She hopped on the teacher’s table and she gave her a worm.

April

A kind lady said she would do the bird seed over the easter holidays. There are no birds at the bird table now that we are back. Our teacher said they will thicken up soon.

Some girls playing on the swing found a little budgie with blue feathers. Its beak has grown into a hook. It has escaped from a cage. The girls are allowed to keep it in their classroom until someone comes to get it.

Our teacher can get the mother thrush to come in the window when she whistles. She hops on the backs of our chairs. She tried to eat some spaghetti on Shirley Timms collage but it had gone dry.

May

This afternoon mother thrush sat on my hand. I have a tiny scratch mark like from a twig.

Mother thrush came into the classroom four times to-day. She got a worm each time. When she comes in we stop our work to watch her and see what she will do.

To-day our teacher had three red lories feeding from her hands. She wasn’t quick enough with seed for the biggest one and it gave her a bad nip on the finger. We got the first aid box from the office.

It is cold today so all the windows are closed. We were having our spelling test and our teacher was walking up and down the rows saying the words and putting them in sentences. We heard a bang on the window. We didn’t know what it was but Ron Hodge went outside and the mother thrush was dead under the window. Some of the girls cried then we buried her.

June

A jacky winter came to the bird table to-day. It is a melodious bird with a many magic lilting notes.

Our teacher told us a story about two kookaburras. The kookaburras had a nest in a tree hollow near her house. The top of the tree where they were nesting came down in a big storm. The next day the mother and father kookaburra used their beaks to try and hammer a hollow further down the tree, but the wood was too hard and they gave up. In the afternoon she saw them flying around a tree further down the road near the saleyards. They were harassing a big old possum and it worked. He got sick of the noise and the pecking. When he moved out the kookaburras moved in. Our teacher says kookaburras are opportunists.

Some magpies have started swooping already. Two boys were swooped near the bridge on the Leitchville Road and one had blood coming out of his hair. They mainly swoop boys.

Harry drains the oil on the Waratah. It’s a complicated job due to the awkward position of the sump plug. He has the front end of the motorcycle hoisted over the rafters in the dairy to get some rise on the mid-section and set the oil moving. A quick ride around the farm warms the oil up, but by the time he’s got the bike in position it’s cooling again. Harry crouches down and watches the thick liquid pool around the lip of the plug. Oil has something of the herd about it – piling back up on top of itself, wanting the familiar, being reluctant to spill forwards into the new unlubricated space. He rocks the bike back and forth to loosen the oil within, to make it run faster. The oil trickles out of the plug. He shakes the bike again. The oil is sluggish, it doesn’t want to run. He’s getting frustrated. Harry wants to kick the bike, but he tries to lift the whole weight of it in his arms and jolt it in