The Maned Wood Duck couple are back on the little dam, and enjoying being able to wander up the slope without having to fly over a netting fence or waddle along to a gate opening.
It’s rather late for ducklings, so I assume they’ve done all the baby business elsewhere and arrived here as true ’empty-nesters.’
The other day, the pair happened to be hanging about near two young kangaroos, just above where the fence used to be. They made a serendipitous picture and I was yet again grateful that no netting loomed behind them.
It reminded me of the tiniest tale in my book Mountain Tails, where something similar happened.
Two-by-two
Once I saw a strikingly symmetrical composition of creatures in the orchard, a line-up of paired animals.
Two kookaburras sat opposite each other, on two stakes of a netting guard; below each one stood a magpie; and just beyond them, outside the fence, two kangaroos faced each other as if posing for a coat of arms.
It was a fortuitous flash that soon broke apart, but it made me think of the animals queuing for the Ark, and thus my Refuge as being like that. Only it’s not God’s punitive Flood they need refuge from — it’s Man.