Читать книгу Friends and Foes in the Australian Bush - Edward Sorenson - Страница 10

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Jack, the Kookaburra, had for days been impatient to get out of his nest, which was in the spout of a grey gum tree, and to explore the big forest where his mother spent most of her time. He knew it must be jolly, for he often heard her and other members of the family laughing loudly. The sound was sometimes near at hand, but at other times, so far away that only a faint echo reached him. He was full fledged, and had discovered that he had a pair of fine wings, which he might flap to his enjoyment, if he only had room.

There had been three in the brood. One, a restless little thing, had been crowded out when three weeks old. Farmer Slocum, who lived near, had picked her up and put her in a wire cage so that no harm would come to her. He called her Goo-goo. The cage was hung under the verandah wall-plate, where the old birds came and fed the little prisoner, when no one was about.

The other had been a greater fidget, and a terrible squawk besides, and Jack chuckled to himself when the fledgling stood up at the entrance and toppled over.

He remembered the great row his parents kicked up when they came home and saw a heap of feathers and a freshly severed beak on the grass. He had a livelier recollection of the whack on the ear he received for craning his neck round the doorpost. Then, when he was alone again, he had ventured to peep over the balcony to see what had become of little Johnny. At that instant, an enormous eagle lit almost on the front doorstep.

He gave a tremendous squawk, and backed in so precipitately, that his short tail feathers were crumpled up against the furniture. With his head bent low, and his neck stretched out, he peered affrightedly at the winged giant as long as he remained on the limb. He watched until the parents returned, when they ordered the intruder, in a loud voice, to get off the premises.

These things had made Jack more cautious. However, a hullabaloo at the next door neighbor's so worked on his curiosity that he could not restrain himself any longer. Out he scrambled on to the limb, where he made clumsy efforts to balance himself, while he took in the situation.

Far down the flat, he heard Pa Kookaburra laughing at the latest joke. Just behind him, where stood farmer Slocum's house, a quaint old dame was bustling through the grass towards a cackling hen. Directly in front of him, a pair of Bush Kingfishers were attacking a big goanna with all the fury and strength they were capable of.

They had pecked out a repository for their eggs in a white ants' nest, which was built high up on the trunk of a dead tree. Just under this nest, Kojurrie (the goanna) was clinging. He was waiting a favorable opportunity to steal the three or four pearly-white eggs within. His black head swung from side to side, and his forked tongue was darting in and out, as the excited birds flew and screeched at him. The Soldier Bird and the Magpie Lark came to help them, and their vicious smacks soon convinced him that an easier meal was to be got elsewhere.

As he scuttled away, the victorious kingfishers shook out their ruffled plumes, and talked at a great rate about the indignity, while Jack uttered a low chuckle of approval.

They were relations of his. Proud little beauties they were, in their showy collars. The female had a deep blue, and her mate a snow-white one. Compared with their brilliant colors, his own plumage was dull and commonplace. It varied from light chestnut to dusky brown on the back and wings, with dashes of shimmering blue on wings, shoulders, and lower portion of the back. The tail was brownish, barred, or mottled with black. There was a lot of white on the under parts, while the rest of his plumage was a light buff. The upper beak was brownish black; the under one, like the feet, was yellowish. He had also a sort of crest, noticeable when he was excited, or at such times when several were holding a corroboree.

He had other relatives, one of which, the Blue Kingfisher, haunted the rivers and creeks, and lived entirely on fish and aquatic insects. The Quatawur, (also called White-tail, Silver-tail, Racket-tail, and Cinnamon-breasted Kingfisher), was a northern beauty with a big red bill, blue crown, wings and tail. The latter was divided by two white central feathers which extended eight or nine inches beyond the others. The Quatawur laid three or four white eggs in an excavation made in the ground termites' nest. The Purple Kingfisher, and the Poditti, or Yellow-billed Kingfisher, a slaty-grey bird, with yellow and black on the head and back of the neck, were also relations. Another relative, the Sacred Kingfisher, a handsome blue and green bird whose screeching cree-cree-cree was already familiar to his ears, was a migrant who wintered in Northern Australia. This bird returned South in the spring, and laid four or five pinky-white eggs between October and December.

He had others, all more gaudy than himself, but, with the exception of the Kitticarrara, a beautiful bird with varying shades of blue on the wings and tail, who made a barking or yelping noise, and, who, like the Blue Kingfisher, plunged headlong after fish in the streams, they were all midgets in comparison. Some of his own species were prettily plumed in mottled chestnut. Others were snow-white, and white and chestnut, but the latter were more in the nature of freaks. He was the Great Brown Kingfisher, one of the bird oddities of the world, whose fame had spread to the farthest seas and the remotest lands.

He was feeling quite puffed up at this stage of his existence, for he was handsome in his sober way, and he had just mastered the art of reversing in one hop without tilting his tail over his back and welting the limb with his huge beak, when he descried a well-known form winging home across the plantation. He returned to the nest with all haste, and was waiting therein, like a dutiful boy, when his mother arrived and dropped a big worm into his capacious maw.

Before he was quite a month old, his mother allowed him to leave his retreat. Then commenced his flying lessons. The first step was a pretence. He would cling tightly to the limb while flapping mightily with his wings. After that, he took running hops along the limb, and flying hops to branches close by, followed by timid flutters to branches lower down.

In one of these flights, he missed his footing and fluttered to the ground. At this, the old birds made a tremendous row. They fluttered about in great excitement and ordered him to get aloft again. They flew down on the ground beside him, then flew up again, to show him how it was done. At the same time they koo-kooed and shouted to encourage him. But Jack put in a lot of practice on the ground before he succeeded in flapping laboriously up to the lowest branch. The old birds were soon beside him, and commemorated the event in a great laugh.

Next day he ventured on a flight to the nearest tree. He hit the limb clumsily, and had to flap desperately, as he hung on the side of it, to get his balance. But he was a proud little chap as he looked back, with his tail tilted up, and his neck and head feathers ruffled. Before the day waned, he had learned how to arrive without knocking the wind out of his body against the limb.

When his parents next left the roost, (soon after the Yellow Robin had announced the dawn, and while the Magpies were pouring out their rich melody), he flew off boldly with them, and endeavored, from a neighboring tree, to join in the salute to the summer morning. The effort was ludicrous, for the rollicking notes of his parents had not yet come to him, and would not for more than another month.

Within the house that stood near, Farmer Slocum was awakened by a dig in the ribs from his amiable spouse.

"There are the Jackasses, Bill!"

Bill at once got up and dressed. Like a good many more in the bush, his working day was from Jackass to Mopoke--a phrase which means from daylight to dusk. In earlier times, the Kookaburra was known as the "Settler's Clock," from a belief that his joyful paeans were vented regularly at morn, noon, and dusk. He was supposed to be silent through the heat of the forenoon, and the wane of the afternoon. But the Kookaburra laughed just when the fit took him, particularly when excited. This excitement occurred at any hour during the day. He would laugh as readily at the violent death of his mother-in-law, as he would at the enraged settler when he fell off his haystack. When one alighted alone in a tree from a fairly long flight, he would generally laugh loudly, and repeat at intervals until joined by a mate. A bird in one tree would also answer a brother in a neighboring tree. The refrain would be caught up by others in the distance, in the same manner as cockerels answer one another at night. Again, when two came together on a limb, their mutual greeting was boisterous, and, when several met from different directions, it was unanimously accepted as an occasion for general rejoicing.

When Slocum got down to his ploughing, the birds were already waiting for him on a stump. He had long been accustomed to the two old birds.

Still, he could not tell at a little distance that the third was a young one, for the only difference in their appearances was that the adults were a little darker on the backs and wings. Careful measurement might have shown a little difference in size. The adult length was eighteen inches, and included five-and-a-half inch tail, and three inch bill. When they continued to feed him in the open, and when he did not take part in their rejoicings, of course, his youthfulness was betrayed.

They flew to the furrow when the plough started, and followed along behind, picking up the white grubs, toads, frogs, beetles, and worms. To get a meal there was easy, and ere many days Jack was killing his own grubs and snails by battering them against the clods. Now and again, the farmer turned up a nest of young mice, with the remark that it was "a feast for the Jackasses."

Slocum always called them jackasses. He also called his wife a jackass when she took a silly fit of giggling. The name probably originated from jacasse, the French word for kingfisher, though there were several versions as to the derivation. One bush version was that the cry in the distance was mistaken for the bray of an ass by a newchum named Jack. His mates afterwards so mercilessly chaffed him about his ass that the bird became generally known as "Jack's Ass." Another had an aboriginal origin. A blackfellow, struck by some resemblance in a hilarious miner to the laughing bird, called him "chaka-chaka." The miners subsequently alluded to the birds as Chaka-Chakas. This was soon shortened to Chakas, and that in turn corrupted to Jackass. Still another yarn had it that an early immigrant, on being told by a scientific person that the name of the bird was Dacelo gigas, interpreted thus to his mates: "He says 'that's an ol' jackass.' "

One day, Slocum, finding a squirming snake thrust through the wires of the cage on the verandah, remarked that it was time Goo-goo was liberated. So he took her down the farm, and, after exercising her wings by throwing her up in the air a few times, left her with the old birds, who greeted her return with exultant notes.