I was just doing some work clearing our new walking path in the bush up the creek behind our house yesterday (and again today) when this big guy suddenly turned up on my arm. I had been lopping some small branches with the machete and he must have been on one. Gave me quite a start I can tell you! He (or she) must be around 3″ (75mm) long – and what a delightful green colour!

I did a preliminary post about this walk (The Creek) when I began some work on it in the autumn, then the creek became too high for the work to continue without having miserably wet feet all day so I suspended operations until now.

I am well advanced with the project now so I will be taking some photos of it soon. I thought there was a baby eagle in the wedge tailed eagles’ nest yesterday about a kilometre in but I suspect it was some other bird. Still, I saw the eagle’s flying out from up the creek yesterday afternoon and cruising over our lambs (too big for them now I hope) so I will pay more attention when I go back to take some photos tomorrow perhaps.

I hope to make the track good enough I can take my Postie Bike up there with a spray tank on the back as there are just oceans of blackberries (it is it our land) and someone needs to spray them. As they die and clear out I will replace them with some beautiful (mainly) exotic trees, especially ones which have fruits and b=nuts for the birds/possums etc.

We have had an unusual bird around the farm for a few months. It reminds me of Edward Thomas’ wonderful poem ‘Unknown Bird’ as we have often heard it calling but not managed to get a look at it. We did see it yesterday (twice) so I am hopeful we will get a shot of it and begin to identify it.

It is not a bird I am familiar with I must say and I know a great many of our native birds, so it is obviously one which is new to the area, though I feel that I have seen one before when I was a child in Northern NSW, or out on the Western Plains droving etc as a youth. It is about the size and colouration of a wattle bird (but it is not one). It has a much shorter rounder head and a curious dipping flight – and a unique call.  Exciting.

See Also: The Creek.

The Unknown Bird

By Edward Thomas

Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard

If others sang; but others never sang

In the great beech-wood all that May and June.

No one saw him: I alone could hear him

Though many listened. Was it but four years

Ago? or five? He never came again.

Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,

Nor could I ever make another hear.

La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off—

As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,

As if the bird or I were in a dream.

Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes

Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still

He sounded. All the proof is—I told men

What I had heard.

                                   I never knew a voice,

Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told

The naturalists; but neither had they heard

Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,

I had them clear by heart and have them still.

Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then

As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:

Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say

That it was one or other, but if sad

‘Twas sad only with joy too, too far off

For me to taste it. But I cannot tell

If truly never anything but fair

The days were when he sang, as now they seem.

This surely I know, that I who listened then,

Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering

A heavy body and a heavy heart,

Now straightway, if I think of it, become

Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.

PS: I finally managed to capture a photo of him today (8/12/20) and identified him. He is a Horsfield Bronze Cuckoo: