The Tangled Bank Robert Michael Pyle
MAGPIE SONG
In praise of those things that pull you out of your stupor and situate you in place
After the forever-flight
from Portland to Perth via San
Francisco and Sydney, I slept the
sleep of the crypt. It would be weeks
before my circadian rut and I settled in
comfortably again together, but there is
something about sleep deprivation that
heightens the senses, which is why it has
been an important element of vision
quests. And this boldly patterned entity
staring back at me from the lawn outside
my window at St. Catherine’s College was
certainly a vision.
Clearly, this presence was crowlike,
shockingly pied in black-and-white. Its
chalky, front-heavy bill reminded me of an
English rook as it yo-yoed to worm a
niblet. My >eld guide showed it to be the
Australian magpie, belonging to the bell-magpies, but it might as well have been
called a crow; after all, when Audubon
named the nutcracker of the western
peaks for its >nder, he called it Clark’s
crow. But there is already an Australian
crow, and an Australian raven, small but
making up for it with a bushy beard. So it
is not surprising that this Antipodean bird
was tagged “magpie,” if only for its two-tone suit—black face, back, and breast;
white mantle, wings, and belly. What was
surprising was its beautiful song. Unlike
the Australian crow’s harsh caw or the
raven’s ubiquitous squall that sounds like
a seriously pissed-o= pussycat, the magpie warbles like a whisper, or a ?ute.
I was in Perth to attend a conference
called Come Outside and Play, so when all
the talk was over, I did. Along the bush
trails of enormous Kings Park, spring
wild?owers were peaking. The most
prominent pink towers were the alien invasive gladiolas, but many native plants also
contributed to the extraordinary palette.
Strangest were kangaroo paws, the state
?ower—velvety, two-foot-tall, red and green
like painted buntings stu=ed into parrot
suits. When you see the purple, blue, scarlet, orange, and wild, dazzling, parrot
green as they daub themselves all over the
fruit trees, tossing husks here and there
with abandon, you know you are not in
Kansas anymore—or southwest Washington, for that matter. But the lorikeets
are not easy on the ear. They screech in
?ight like a pack of tractors grinding
No matter where I go, if only I’ll look, I can never be anywhere
other than at home in the world.
wonders that would be hard to dream up
from scratch. This would be the perfect
Christmas plant, if only it bloomed Down
Under in midsummer instead of spring.
The birds more than matched the fabulous ?owers. I never tracked down one
of the brilliant blue fairy wrens that all
birders covet when they come here,
though I did see emus from a bus, and
kookaburras with their exaggerated bills,
sitting indeed in gum trees. And fantails,
and honeyeaters, and unbelievably metallic
bronzewings forged from some ornithological alchemy, all thrilling and completely outside my experience. What most
rang this birder’s bells, however, were the
psittacines: the parrots. On my >rst walk
out, ungodly squawks and cascading
petals announced the >rst of many ?ocks
of rainbow lorikeets, stunning wonders
through their gears in falsetto, making
you cover your ears even as your eyes
open as wide as they’ll go.
I was coming around a curve in Kings
Park when I heard a pleasant, purring
bell-tone that rose into a bright “dotty dot”
or several-noted ring. It took me a second
to decode, but then I discerned the words
“twenty-eight.” Of course! This was the 28
parrot, also known as the Australian ringneck. A dozen or more 28s foraged on the
trail before me: grapy head, yellow neck-ring, deep blue wings, and pure chartreuse
overall. They remained until I was almost
upon them, behaving in a way that the old
bird books call “con>ding.” All through
my visit the noisy lorikeets were unavoidable, while the 28s appeared softly, here
and there and now and then.
