The Great Aviary of Love – by Kathryn Goldie
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
MYTH
We fell in love at the Phoenix, a dingy pub opposite a bus stop. We joked about the graffiti in the toilets. She wanted to know everything about me. She put her hand on my leg.
REALITY
She has my toucan wind chime, the one I bought with my good ex. My good ex haggled it down from $15 to $12.50. Now the toucan perches silently on her balcony, watching me with its wooden eye. It has watched my every move for more than a year. She was supposed to be just minding it.
MYTH
The phoenix rises from the ashes.
REALITY
My suburb didn’t burn and I didn’t even notice the bushfires. My skin raged with chickenpox. There were cinders around me, threatening to ignite, for almost two years. It was over but we slept together occasionally.
MYTH
Yellow-tailed black cockatoos aren’t supposed to live here. Their natural habitat is further south, further west. Their natural food is the wood grub that lives in wattle and eucalypts.
REALITY
The black cockatoos moved here to eat pinecones. They used to live in the pine plantations, but, when they burnt down, the cockatoos moved to the ridge two blocks from my house. The ridge has been bulldozed to make a road. Sometimes I see black cockatoos when I hang out my washing, early. They don’t fly so much as bounce through the air.
They cry like souls caught between the tops of the eucalypts and the bottom of the clouds.
“They cry like souls caught between the tops of the eucalypts and the bottom of the clouds.”
MYTH
She loved me.
REALITY
I loved her. She loved him more.
MYTH
She told me a story about ducks. One morning she saw a pair of ducks on a neighbour’s roof. The next day she saw one duck, dead, on the curb, while the other paced nearby. The duck paced on the curb for three days after the dead duck had been removed. Then it disappeared.
REALITY
I looked, but I never saw any ducks.
MYTH
Although they are the territory’s fauna emblem, there are no gang-gang cockatoos in my suburb.
REALITY
This summer I saw gang-gangs eating a tree next to my neighbours’ balcony. After two days the tree had no leaves, no bark and no new branches, and the gang-gangs left. They might come back when it recovers.
MYTH
Birdwatching is a good way to meet people.
REALITY
I went birdwatching one Saturday morning in January. It was just the leader and me. He was curt. He said that in summer you have to work for your birds. We walked for three hours. He thought he saw a tawny frogmouth, but I could see it was a kookaburra. I didn’t go back.
MYTH
Pigeons are vermin.
REALITY
European pigeons are vermin. Poison doesn’t work, because they breed faster than ever, playing catch-up. If they can be fed in a place away from the city and be encouraged to roost there, the eggs can be destroyed and the population halved. Crested pigeons are native, not vermin. They make a whirring sound in their throats when they take off.
MYTH
All birds breed.
REALITY
White-winged choughs have alpha pairs that breed. Other flock members—older offspring: beta, gamma, delta—help them raise the young. They live in mud nests, high up. I saw a nest about 12 metres off the ground, an igloo on a branch. It hurt my neck to look at it. But after the ridge was bulldozed, the tree was gone.
MYTH
Pictures are just pictures. Decorations.
REALITY
She had a picture of a penguin and I said it was cute. She laughed. As I walked away, I realised it was him: beady, downcast eyes and a big gut. It wasn’t cute at all, but I didn’t go back to tell her.
MYTH
A cypress pine is a fire hazard and could fall on a house. For one low price a cypress pine can be removed forever. (For the same price it can be trimmed every year or two and be allowed to live. I chose the trim.)
REALITY
Cypress pines are not dangerous. It is eucalypts that are known as widow-makers. Crimson rosellas and eastern rosellas, not to be confused, play in the cypress pine. When magpies play in the cypress pine, the rosellas leave. When the tree surgeon cuts the right-hand branches off at the trunk, they never grow again, and you have half a tree. Neither rosellas nor magpies play in half a tree.
“When the tree surgeon cuts the right-hand branches off at the trunk, they never grow again, and you have half a tree. Neither rosellas nor magpies play in half a tree.”
MYTH
Seagulls eat chips and live by the sea.
REALITY
A seagull knocked my chocolate gelato, double scoop, out of my cone and onto the ground. I had only had one lick. I wrapped the scoop as best I could in a serviette and placed it deep in the bin so that the gull couldn’t get it.
That was at the beach. Here, 100 kilometres from the sea, there are lots of seagulls, lost at land.
MYTH
The phoenix rises from the ashes.
REALITY
The phoenix is not a real bird. Real birds live only once. Ashes are just ashes. She still has my toucan wind chime. And her penguin. ▼
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
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