Hi, and thanks for dropping by my blog,

We have many trees surrounding our home, plus there are many more on the lake front only metres from the house. They provide shelter and many places for perching and nesting for all of our garden variety birds. Even for some of our water birds (as you will see below). These unexpected observations surprised me. It’s amazing the birds you might find at the top of a sixty metre tree.

Firstly a great white egret. It stands over a metre in height with a wingspan of 130cm-170cm .You have to wonder how they balance up there with the wind blowing a gale. But they do.

and then an ibis, another very large bird (up to 76cm tall).

So all in all we have lots of birds flying around our home most of the time.

But I always cringe when I hear a bird crash into our back windows. A few years ago a rainbow lorikeet broke its neck on impact. I felt so sad.

Of late there seems to be an increased number of kamikaze birds launching themselves at our windows. So on investigating this latest crash I expected to find either another victim or the bird had flown away. However I was in for a surprise as this little guy, (he’s classified as a feral pigeon), was sitting on the tiny ledge outside the ceiling to floor window he had hit, on our glassed-in observation room at the end of our veranda.

This photo was taken through the glass window, as he is sitting about twenty feet above the ground and there was no way I could reach him physically. So he sat on one side of the glass, I sat on the other.

I’m asking, “Are you okay?” I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. The lights were on but nobody was home. Was it: “What happened?” “Where am I?” or even “Who am I?”

He didn’t appear badly hurt. Perhaps stunned. We just observed each other through the glass. I thought he would fly away, but he didn’t. So being the nurse I am, or was (I don’t think nurses ever really retire it’s who we are), I checked on him through the afternoon. It was over two hours before he eventually flew away.

It’s funny we grow up learning to feed the pigeons (probably stuff they should never eat). It’s only when we reach adulthood we realise that these birds are really a pest in large flocks. But then they are God’s created creatures and the Fall of Man altered their destiny just as He did ours.

I wonder how it would be in a perfect world?

Have a great day!

Marilyn