Remembering Birds

The constant chatter by the pond calms my nerves more than silence ever could. Cormorants sun themselves on the black rocks, outstretched feathers rendered silhouette; three pelicans glide in to land on the water. It is easy to forget how big they are until they’re right in front of me; it is easy to forget how small I am until the grass comes up to swallow me. It’s a gentle bite—still unfamiliar but mostly warm and wet; my socks soaked by dew; my back warmed by sun. Dogs jingle across the lawns. I look at them and they look back and I think they smile. Twice now I have seen a cloud of sulphur crested cockatoos take flight: screeching and whirling and breaking into pairs then rejoining the flock. They were startled the first time by a straw-necked ibis whose dark wings caught me off guard until the other birders named it. How many birds would I not notice but for their names? How many people would notice me were it not for the name I carved out for myself? It seems so easy to fly—I keep dreaming about it, but my bones are too heavy, and my eyes would face into the wind, and I’d hardly be able to see through tears. And birds know a lot, but who would be willing to listen? It is hard not to think about the fingerprints on this land. I cannot sit in the red dirt by the stream and ignore those who have walked this way; I cannot see a darter emerge from the water in one clean line and forget that the sight has lived thousands of years; I cannot listen for the fairywrens in the scrub and forget that they have been muruduwin for longer than my people remember. But the land remembers; the scrub remembers; their tiny feathered bodies remember.

The Darug name for fairywrens comes from the Field Of Mars Environmental Education Centre's website.