Verandah birds

Must be spring; the swallows are back. Several are squeaking and doing aerobatics out there in the yard’s airspace, but two have claimed that of the verandah.

They’re doing low flying runs from one end to the other, looping out over the lattice gate or though the still un-vine-screened ‘windows.’

Over my computer I watch them alight on the fairy light strings — just briefly. They sway a bit, peep to each other  — and they’re off again. I haven’t found where they are nesting; the old one on the verandah rafter has not even been visited, or not so I’ve seen.

I think it might be nearby and that the aerial maneouvres are to shoo off the magpies as much as to show off.

Today, I also had ‘rosellas in the mist’. The rosies haven’t been visiting the verandah, probably busy raising those green-backed babies, and I don’t know how they twigged that today I’d put out some birdseed, after about a month of none. I don’t like them to count on it.

They were a welcome splash of colour.