PS Cottier

Orange-bellied parrots, 2123 
Neophema chrysogaster

They are bigger than budgerigars,
but have never been as numerous. 
A scant handful survived in 2023, 
and smart orange bellies seemed
to be flashing a caution, a more-than-amber
pause, about to fall into a red stop, forever.

How many birds must there be 
for an official murmuration?
We don’t know, but just yesterday,
we counted one hundred or more, 
here, at Warn Marin/Western Port.
The shrubs whistled as if brave cicadas,
had flown over Bass Strait, not these
brilliant, blue-browed, blue-winged birds.
Their song was almost lost to the air’s ear.
Now we can vouch for its weirdness.

The heath has not felt beaks
tearing off so much fruit for years.
Tree hollows must be back way down South,
(or a thousand hand-crafted boxes)
just enough for breeding, enough for
a murmur, if not a murmuration.
They don’t move en masse, though, it must be noted,
but improvise, jazzy, in ones and threes.

They light up the bushes like Christmas lights,
the bellies seen, then hidden in green-grey leaves,
switched on and off by foraging.
We hear that some have been seen
as far North as Sydney. That may be a rumour,
a hopeful mistake, and yet, we saw one hundred.

How many make a murmuration?

PS Cottier

Parrots don’t form murmurations, like starlings, for example. (Perhaps budgies do? I have never seen them in the wild.) I was lucky enough to see a murmuration of native metallic starlings in Far North Queensland recently. But I like the idea of seeing enough of such a rare bird as the Orange-bellied parrot to even think of the word ‘murmuration’ in regard to them. Will they still be around in 100 years? I hope so, and that is what this unusually optimistic poem (for me) envisages.

And as we move towards Christmas, there’s a passing reference to that season here.