Should We Do It?

For 20 years after building our hilltop home, we carefully refrained from feeding the wildlife that shared their rainforest territory with us. The accepted wisdom warned that doing so would make the wild creatures dependent on handouts. They would lose their skills at finding food for themselves and, if we should stop providing for them, they would starve.

It’s a bit like saying that if all the fast food take-aways should close, the human population would starve, knowing no alternative ways of finding sustenance. Still, we supposed The Experts knew best and we followed their advice - until a hard drought struck, three years ago. Years of abundance had encouraged our local Kookaburra family to breed to the maximum. Now the parents, and their two helpers from the previous season, faced raising four new offspring in a time of scarcity. Note: Kookaburras practise a "nursemaid" system of caring for the young. Two of last season’s offspring remain to help raise the new nestlings, while any surplus offspring are relentlessly chased off to find new territory for themselves. This co-operative strategy, though rare elsewhere on the planet, is common to many species of birds native to Australia.

So, my Bloke decided our local lot needed a bit of a helping hand. Buying blade steak in bulk from the butcher, he cut it into long "grub-size" strips. Each meal portion was wrapped in plastic film and deep frozen, then thawed in the microwave every afternoon when the birds arrived. They soon learned the Bloke’s schedule and by 4:30pm would be lined up along a tree branch overlooking the deck where he feeds them. Always, one bird would be missing from the line-up. I suspected this was a lookout, because as the Bloke’s car entered the drive, the tardy one would join the group in the tree, setting off a raucous cackle of greeting from them all. Perhaps it was just their way of saying: "Hey, hurry up with the meat!"

In the early days, we’d spread the meat on the brick paving around the swimming pool, sometimes throwing pieces to watch with admiration as the birds deftly caught them in mid-air. Every piece was held firmly in their great, blade-like beaks and thoroughly bashed against the ground in their natural custom, before being swallowed. All this noisy activity attracted the attention of our black cat, who insisted on watching the afternoon entertainment from a front seat only a few feet away. He never made any move to harass the birds. In any case, with wings for a quick getaway and fully armed with those formidable beaks, they made a target he was not prepared to engage.

For their part, the birds grew so disdainful; they would perch in the rafters right above the cat as he sunned himself on the deck in the mornings. With feline dignity, he’d merely stretch, then turn his back to them. After awhile, the birds gave up the game and went back to taking their morning baths in the pool with barely a glance at the cat. After a long and happy life, having been rescued from misery as an abandoned city stray, our cat companion died this year. Now the Kookaburras, and 29 other species of native and imported birds, have our backyard to themselves.