Baby's first Steps

We live on something of a farm, or perhaps more accurately, a bird sanctuary. It feels like that anyway. In the evenings, as the sun sets, the birds - doves, pigeons, sparrows and a few others - settle in the trees for the night, and the bats come out. Come out of our attic actually. The attic of this old house is the home of hundreds of bats. Even though most of them are out at night, you can still here them falling to the ceiling from the rafters, with a plop, and squirreling around before they get back to their perches.

In the mornings, there is a mass feeding frenzy from just before dawn, when all the young ones scream in unison as they compete for food. The main bedroom, surrounded as it is by trees, gets all of this sound full force. Loudest of all are the parrots (actually ring-necked parakeets) which seem to think it is their duty to wake the dead. They circle the house shrieking at full volume, for no apparent reason.

Aside from Bats, the attic is also home to the intrepid parrots, who have recently founds ways to get in and lay eggs. They pick at the coral plaster, taking advantage of rotten boards to make just enough space to get in and out. Most of the time these eggs don't survive, but I have removed parrots twice previously from the attic and a third set have hatched and are growing now. To the uninitiated, young parrots can sound just like like rats running around, and make a noise not dissimilar to a distant jackhammer. Growing parrots in the attic are not condicive to sleep. The pictures below are of the oldest of three which are in the attic now. The oldest was apparently ready to go and amazingly managed to find its way out.

In this picture the young one has just made its way out of the attic to the edge of the roof. Daddy (you can tell from the ring) is coaxing it out. Come on, he says, you can do it! Ah cyan do it! the adolescent shrieks...

This goes on for quite a while without result so daddy does a fly round to show how easy it is.

And so it jumps with a loud squawk, feet sticking out ungainly, still looking for purchase, somewhere...

But it does manage to fly, and eventually after several rings round the house they settle on a branch of a mahogany tree...There, that wasn't so hard was it?....