I like to think of our Hills hoist as living sculpture. Egg brings performance art to it.
Big day today with the WBsea eagle paying us a close up visit. #kookalife#EggBurra
She was hunting the riverside all day; when we went to see LB, she showed up there. LB didn’t show (I’m glad!) so we went to pick up a parcel from the PO - the owner’s little girl is obsessed with Egg. He finds this tiny human’s fascination with him bewildering 😆
We met up with the landowner at LB’s who reconfirmed permission to be there - much appreciated, as he doesn’t have to do that.
A running man stopped &stated with astonishment, “I’ve heard about a kookaburra person! Is that you?!?” with Egg on my arm &2 ravens circling overhead.
He was a mine of info bcs he’s watched the sea eagles’ nest for 40yrs &confirmed the recent influx of wedgetails. It’s good to find a fellow ‘watcher’ to compare notes with. Egg was on edge with eagle presence, but did well with all the attention. He’s a complete pro.
(Also the Hills hoist is trashed because each time we fix it, half a tree falls on it, so we’ve mostly given up😂)
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The Icarus family interrupted Egg’s rain spa earlier. The baby is very precocious &comes right to him, &Egg isn’t happy about it.
This is a perfect example of kooka vocalisations when non-family kookas are intruding. Egg still uses baby-calls to get my help. #kookalife#EggBurra
You can break down his monologue into separate vocalisations that are: declaring the presence of non-fam kookas; calling for assistance; complaining about these arseholes; telling the arseholes to get off his lawn.
Inside, it’s still important that Egg can continue his territorial ‘dance’, which he’s adapted to his limitations. After a while in his roost, he asks to ‘fly’ to his other fave perch… #SlowEggTV
I’m a bit embarrassed to upload this bcs of my prednisone potato head &sweaty gardening hair, but meh, 🤷♀️what can you do?
(Careful of volume - I’m whispering; Egg gets loud) #kookalife#EggBurra
When he slows down in his call, he wants me to join in. The phone dampens it &it’s way louder in person than it seems here. And this isn’t his loudest…
This is a family/happy call.
We spotted an enormous rainbow. Egg decided he needed to do a personal sign-off, a daily ritual. This call is “I AM EGG AND I AM HERE!”
That first few squawks are basically “TRY ME!”. He’ll make *just those if he is suddenly vulnerable, or if he’s staking claim.
In the’90s I received social support as a single mum for the first time ever. I was studying &doing contract work.
I informed C’link that I wasn’t eligible for Austudy but they paid it anyway. I put it in a separate account til the day they asked for it back using threatening ->
-> letters that implied I’d knowingly defrauded them. The language of the letters was traumatising, but I had informed them TWICE &they had told me I was wrong, so I knew the fault was theirs. The sum they tried to extract was more than they had overpaid ->
-> I knew bcs I had the money, untouched, waiting to be returned. They didn’t like that but accepted it.
Then they began a new course of harassment, more letters demanding payment of the money already returned. I had a lawyer send a cease&desist letter.
It’s past time Australians acknowledged & confronted the
myth of Medicare.
•It’s no longer setting global precedents - it’s behind
•It’s very expensive to be chronically ill/disabled
•Most low income ppl can’t afford to see specialists
•Its lack of coverage is discriminatory
Bandaid changes are not addressing the overarching issues. They are the equivalent of running over a cat for 9 years, then peeling it off the road & trying to inflate the same cat with a bicycle pump.
We need a new cat.
And not a privatised cat.
I made this to show some of the more obvious elements of our communication. I wdn’t normally hassle him to come up, but I knew it would clearly show how he says ‘no’. He knows I know he’s not done yet; he has to do his last call. #kookalife#EggBurra
There’s a lot of nuance in head movements, eye contact, &body language. It’s taken a while for me to learn, but I’m getting there. You might notice he doesn’t *like saying ‘no’ but doesn’t understand why I’m being pushy (not what I usually do).
His reaction to Astro is closer to being irritated by a sibling kooka &is not at all behaviour related to being scared of a dog (Egg goes psycho to get away from any other dogs). Egg does the head bob which in this instance shows he’s ready to engage with me after his call.
Very strange raven activity today.
My home crew having LOOOONG conversations, over distance, this morning - one right at my door.
8 collected at a tiny roadkill by the road at the orchards; dozens &dozens there on my return; >100 spread across the orchard and haybales.
The roadkill was not their focus. I saw this same behaviour once before - that time I moved the roadkill off the road but was enveloped in a curtain of passive but engaged ravens (Opal’s family), flapping &brushing me.
Some of these today will be Onyx’ &Opal’s connections.
But why do they do this? Home now, &the house crew are still relaying talk. All the way home from the orchard, ravens were grouped in treetops or flying with intent.
They barely acknowledge cars, until the last minute - thankfully there’s a good long line of sight ->