Brutkey

thermonuclear small claims
@fullfathomfive@aus.social

I was woken this morning by two kookaburras making a racket down the side passage. Turns out their beaks were stuck together (!)

While they scrambled and fought, trying to pull apart, a currawong sat on the fence commentating the life-or-death struggle.

After my sleepy brain had made sense of what the bloody hell was going on, I fetched some gloves and gently prised them apart. They both flew off in high dudgeon.

What a surreal start to the day.

#kookaburra #KookaburrasOfMastodon #AustralianAnimals #justAustralianthings #birding #birds #wildoz #AussieBirdCount

thermonuclear small claims
@fullfathomfive@aus.social

I was woken this morning by two kookaburras making a racket down the side passage. Turns out their beaks were stuck together (!)

While they scrambled and fought, trying to pull apart, a currawong sat on the fence commentating the life-or-death struggle.

After my sleepy brain had made sense of what the bloody hell was going on, I fetched some gloves and gently prised them apart. They both flew off in high dudgeon.

What a surreal start to the day.

#kookaburra #KookaburrasOfMastodon #AustralianAnimals #justAustralianthings #birding #birds #wildoz #AussieBirdCount

thermonuclear small claims
@fullfathomfive@aus.social

In the 90s everyone had pot pourri and an Anne Geddes calendar in their house. You didn't buy them, they just appeared on your shelf one day next to the Gregorian chant cd (another puzzling addition), covered in a fine layer of dust, like they'd always been there. If you tried to remove them they'd be back again next week.

#90s #the90s

thermonuclear small claims
@fullfathomfive@aus.social

the three genders

#australia

thermonuclear small claims
@fullfathomfive@aus.social

Happy New Year. I know things feel really hard for a lot of us right now, so let me tell you something important:

In the highland rainforest of NSW, in the Werrikimbe region, there’s a community of superb lyrebirds. Lyrebirds are known for their unparalleled mimicry: they can reproduce the call of any bird they hear (and many other sounds as well). They collect songs like crows collect shiny objects. The variety and complexity of their repertoire, and the skill with which they deliver it, determines their reproductive success.

They also compose songs of their own. These songs vary from region to region; they are learned by lyrebirds when they're young, and passed down from generation to generation with remarkable stability. If a lyrebird finds or produces a new melody that other lyrebirds like, they absorb it into the communal repertoire.

The lyrebirds that live in the Werrikimbe are called flute lyrebirds because in winter, when they're in love, they sing a complex rising melody which sounds like scales played on a flute. This "flute accent" exists nowhere else in the world; it’s unique to this one community. On cold mornings, it floats down through the mists like an enchantment.

How did this haunting melody come about? It's said that a young boy kept a tame lyrebird, and every day the bird listened to him practicing the flute. Then one day the bird escaped. It went to live with its wild brethren, and taught them this new song.

But the truth is much more magical: Lyrebirds composed this song all on their own. It's more complex than any human flautist could ever hope to achieve, and it’s got features unique to lyrebird melody and anatomy.

Lyrebirds live and breathe music. They are built for music. They spend their lives studying the soundscape. They listened to the world around them, all of the pain and suffering and desire and joy, and this is what they sang back into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00nrAh2zVWo

#lyrebirds #AustralianBirds #werrikimbe #birds #BirdsOfFediverse #music #song #EnvironmentalHumanities #flute #australia #northernNSW