27/01/2019
“Give me a home among the gum trees, with lots of plum trees...”
Here at Caravan Cottage, Lochiel, I am certainly surrounded by gum trees. There are four fruit trees; 1 orange, 1 peach and 2 unknown off to one side of the cottage, which provide welcome shade. Over a couple of months I have watched a pair of wagtails build a nest and hatch two eggs. Like all kids (so I am told, not having kids of my own), they left home, but two weeks later they came back for a feed.
While the wagtails were nesting they would chitter away at me if I sat on the veranda. Their nest was at my eye height on a branch about a car length from where I would sit. I don’t know if they were talking to me or telling me to get lost, because they used the same tone towards other creatures that came too near to their tree. At least they didn’t dive bomb me. There was a tribe of four magpies and four plovers that were constantly being dive bombed. Yet when the horse came around they would play at his feet and sit on his back. One day I was sitting having a cup of tea and to my right where the sun reaches one side of the house, a 5 foot red belly black snake was minding his own business, sunbathing. Well the wagtails weren’t having any of that, so they dive bombed him until he slithered away.
So, if like my friend Sharon Orion (aka Mrs Naturopath Extraordinaire) animal medicine interests you I have made a list below.
Wagtail - motion
Magpie - balance
Plover/Lapwing - eagerness
Horse - power
Snake - transmutation
from Animal Dreaming by Scott Alexander King.
