Cool couple

It’s no secret that I love Tawny Frogmouths. Every day now I go out to look up into the bottlebrush tree and and see if my two new visitors are still there. They have been sitting well apart, and are mostly just visible as two blobs amongst the branches. Only one can really be seen in the dense foliage.

And he/she can see me, as this rather annoyed look shows. ‘So what you gawping at?!’

Or is it ‘Can’t a bird get some decent sleep around here?’

Most of the time they seem to take up the same separate positions on the branch each day, and sleep the warm days away.

I have seen them described as ‘grotesque’ but to me they are beautiful in a unique and characterful way.

Who could resist those softly patterned feathers, such clever camouflage that they can simply nap in view all day, unlike other night birds like owls?

Or that prominent tuft above the beak, which always impresses me as long eyelashes, although unromantically described as ‘bristles’ in my bird book

Then, after one especially cold night, early next morning when I went to check, I found them snuggled up together, feathers fatly fluffed. And so they stayed all day. My very cool couple, keeping warm.