I wanted a good photo of a cockatoo. They are almost my favourite birds – especially in Canberra. When I say that, I am reminded of a lecturer at the University of Warwick who began every seminar with: ‘Ahh. [name of play for that week] My favourite play!’ It took some months for us to tumble to him, but it was an excellent way to start a seminar. So – cockatoos are my favourite birds. And magpies. And kurrawongs. And of course kookaburras. Let’s not forget crows, either: they are really wonderful.
Oh heck! shall I start again? I wanted a photo of a cockie – I just did. OK?
It should be easy in Canberra, where they flock by the score and salute the evening with raucous joy. Maybe in my next life I can be a cockatoo: I could float through Canberra, screaming greetings, and perching in the tall trees with all the roosting crowd.
Captain Cook Crescent was overcast and grey, darkening already towards four-thirty in the afternoon. I would have to be quick to get a photo.
Captain Cook Crescent leads out of Manuka
The birds had gone quiet. Oddly, today there were few cockies around. One or two scudded away from high in the tall trees.
This one was moving off rapidly to the north – towards wherever the sun might have gone.
flying alone
The light darkened unnaturally quickly. My eyesight felt dim and the air dense: somehow curdling not just in the sky, but all around me.
another loner
Actually, I think this one might be a photo of a cockie that has moved briskly out of shot. Wow! I thought. I’d forgotten how early it gets dark in Canberra in the Autumn. Winter will be here soon. I may have to try tomorrow, a bit earlier in the day.
dusk, and the grey darkens
Fed up with impossible cockies, what is there left to photograph? My first ever selfie?
They are really hard – you can’t just point and click. I tried smiling.
worse and worse
I look like my father – and this is the better of the two.
I’d given up on the cockatoos by now and was just photographing any old thing that came along. Here’s a doggo – the only one available on my walk.
Just after I took the photo he decided to do his duty and bark at me.
A thriving protea loomed out of the dimness.
Then: a clear view of a cockatoo perched in a tree, in the middle of the central reservation. Relief for me, but quite far up and still a dimmish shot against the slurry of grey.
Are two poor photos twice as good as one, or just twice as bad?
It lingered there long enough for me to get a second poor photo.
Finally – back to Annabel’s charming house. In the gathering dusk of my point-and-click even this looks somehow sinister and buried in the wood, like a cottage in a fairy tale.
A classic early Canberran build – originally for a civil servant – and largely unchanged over the years.
Annabel arrived a while later, after dark. I was chopping up vegetables for ratatouille (my signature safe dish when cooking for a host).
“Did you see the eclipse?” she asked. “About four thirty?”
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