somewhat avian
Tuesday, 22 March 2005 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtDrought in Cape Town means we have heavy water restrictions, which means we're only allowed to water the garden on two days a week, for an hour, half an hour with a hand-held hosepipe, and the rest with, can you believe it, buckets. The wonders of modern civilisation, hoses and sprinklers and what have you readily to hand, and I have to lug buckets around. Something very wrong somewhere. I'm getting seriously milkmaid arm-muscles.
Anyway. The upside of spending half an hour standing in the garden with a hosepipe yesterday is that the local bird life is obviously suffering from the water lack as much as the garden is. I had a triumvirate of white-eyes playing in the spray for almost the whole period; they hang around in the trees wittering excitedly to themselves, and fly down through the spray at intervals, or have mad hyperactive hysterical baths in puddles. I love watching birds bath, they're so wholehearted about it, lots of splash and giggle. White-eyes are tiny and slightly pudgy and endearing, and look a bit like psycho circus clowns, with big, white, obviously made-up circles around their eyes, startling against the dull military green of their plumage. The hosepipe has one of those spray nozzles on it, and shoots an arc of spray about 4 metres, but the birds were coming quite close to me in their excitement. There's also a pair of groundscraper thrushes who live in the garden (taking their lives daily in their dear little birdy claws, given that two of our four cats are psycho bird-killers). They run around on the ground the whole time I'm watering, with that odd, stop-motion dash-and-bob, keeping a careful eye on me, but following the spray around to grab the worms and insects and stuff that come to the surface with the damp. The thrushes have a rather attractive dull orange front, which is exactly the same colour as the dead leaves from the plane-tree, so I generally don't even spot them unless they move. They also like the spray, and dash through it at intervals. None of the birds fly away if I deliberately move the spray onto them - they're probably about as heat-stressed as I am, poor things.
My sister has a pair of eagle owls living on her property. I'm horribly, horribly jealous.
In other ironies, I have a nasty cold (always feels wrong in a heat-wave). The bug may be doing the rounds, since both the chemists in Rondebosch were out of my favourite 'flu med this morning - they both sold out over the weekend. Alarming Plague Hits Cape Town! And, in fact, by all accounts, London. Must be an astrological conjunction or something.
Anyway. The upside of spending half an hour standing in the garden with a hosepipe yesterday is that the local bird life is obviously suffering from the water lack as much as the garden is. I had a triumvirate of white-eyes playing in the spray for almost the whole period; they hang around in the trees wittering excitedly to themselves, and fly down through the spray at intervals, or have mad hyperactive hysterical baths in puddles. I love watching birds bath, they're so wholehearted about it, lots of splash and giggle. White-eyes are tiny and slightly pudgy and endearing, and look a bit like psycho circus clowns, with big, white, obviously made-up circles around their eyes, startling against the dull military green of their plumage. The hosepipe has one of those spray nozzles on it, and shoots an arc of spray about 4 metres, but the birds were coming quite close to me in their excitement. There's also a pair of groundscraper thrushes who live in the garden (taking their lives daily in their dear little birdy claws, given that two of our four cats are psycho bird-killers). They run around on the ground the whole time I'm watering, with that odd, stop-motion dash-and-bob, keeping a careful eye on me, but following the spray around to grab the worms and insects and stuff that come to the surface with the damp. The thrushes have a rather attractive dull orange front, which is exactly the same colour as the dead leaves from the plane-tree, so I generally don't even spot them unless they move. They also like the spray, and dash through it at intervals. None of the birds fly away if I deliberately move the spray onto them - they're probably about as heat-stressed as I am, poor things.
My sister has a pair of eagle owls living on her property. I'm horribly, horribly jealous.
In other ironies, I have a nasty cold (always feels wrong in a heat-wave). The bug may be doing the rounds, since both the chemists in Rondebosch were out of my favourite 'flu med this morning - they both sold out over the weekend. Alarming Plague Hits Cape Town! And, in fact, by all accounts, London. Must be an astrological conjunction or something.
