Bird Noises

The day appeared almost the same as any other, no rain from Christmas Day, on through February. For sixty days and nights, the town's tall century-old wooden homes sang out, a creaking choir.

Danny the Mayor spent months listening, worrying about the portend: a chorus of woodgrain against gaps, wood on wood, on glass, against plaster and stone. Walls, fence posts, clotheslines, cupboards, and chairs sang, splitting and splintering under sweltering summer heat.

Weekly, violent cracking bolts shocked the ground, speared from thunderheads, that brought the promise of change, but never delivered.

All of us were out of sorts; children, extra whiney, were hard to soothe with less water for cool baths or pools. Tanks, dams, ponds, and creeks slowing and emptying. No one had anything but a mild hunger, with parched, lips and tongues; not even snot or phlegm to relieve the dryness.

Restlessness afflicted the town, with the constant scan for a whisper of cooling breeze. Sitting outside, and yarns over fences were brief, and lately laconic. Even a "g'day mate" to a passing friend seemed too much to do and insensitive. Women soaked their tea towels with bore-stained water from artesian waters deep below town, and pegged them to fans, to cool the air momentarily.

But the town's awakening was different already on this Leap Year's 29th of February dawn. At 5:00 a.m., a gentle susurrous sound, a rustling and murmuring, and a distant sound, like rusty gates swinging on hinges, laid an acoustic fog over the town.

In twisted, sweaty sheets Danny woke, throwing off the covers; he stuck his little finger in one ear, and then the other, wiggling amongst the sticky ear wax to move it on. But there it was, like tinnitus drumming away, not budging.

But not just Danny; the sound fog woke the town's folk up altogether. Fingers wriggled in ears in bedrooms across the town; but the sounds, unrelenting, grew. They thickened as if an en plein air painter was layering soundwaves around their homes. All were drawn out into the dusty dawn, tentatively, meeting on waking streets, eyes skyward, needing to find each other, and who'd felt and heard this too. But what had they heard?

Never had the town been woken together like this. Gingerly people stepped from their porches, in pyjamas, slippers, thongs, or bare feet, down their paths, across dry crackling yards. The kids, usually morning-boisterous were quiet, holding hands, lining up just off the road, its asphalt releasing warm, sticky smells and the faint shimmer of night's unrelenting heat.

People leaned in to listen, the sounds intriguing. Danny shivered; they all shared the shiver and a flash of anxiety moved like a silent Mexican wave, from one to another, its meta-rhythm connecting heartbeats as one.

Above, the sky was obscured by thick white clouds called Mammatus forming softly hanging breast-like white balloons of clouds. Further out as far as we could see, they were edged with pink and gold hints of sun, like a gold-embossed tapestry.

Danny spoke suddenly, breaking the hushed crowd's quiet awe, saying "Those clouds look like a bloody great flock of huge pelicans all bunched together, with their big pouch beaks all stretched out and full of stinking fish!" Indeed, they did, like gular pouches of hundreds of pelicans. Someone laughed, others as well, as humour delivered relief.

A zephyr breeze disturbed the bulbous clouds. Just then above and around them, flashes of colour swirled through the Mammatus and heralded a brilliant sky above, bringing gasps from the townsfolk, and squeals of delight from the kids.

Hanging there was a gift, a spectacular scene, of thousands of fluttering birds, a Realm, a Council of birds, a fluttering carnival of phosphorescence.

Danny, the local Mayor, and his people responded with a mass sigh, with awe; their anxiety dripped away with the night's sweats, for the beauty revealed above.

The birds began to parade and dance, first, Gang Gang Cockatoos, black feathered with bright red heads like sirens, their creaky-gate-like calls, screeching out as they flew lanky and lean across the lower sky, to lead the way.

Pelicans circled down from a mile above, to a holding circle pattern. Kookaburras swooped low and lined up in the middle of the road, then cacked out a heraldic song, at first like their usual laugh, but which everyone heard as familiar words by this chorus of kookas:

Dear Kin, we beseech you all gathered together

We have come to ask you, all birds of the feather,

To cut human impacts on climate and weather

Our kin are threatened, endangered, and lost

You will be next and will lose out the most

Our tree homes destroyed by your poisons and tractors

By axes and concrete, by roads, and bad practice

Without our trees and nests, we can't breed this year

We must reel in the horrors and ignorance and fear

With Earth's Council of Trees, we all sing today

'We are kin, we are sentient, whatever you say'

Ecology to treasure, but it seems you do not

Know what it is that we share, but we're hurting a lot

The loss of our trees and forests has made

A world we can't bear, for the anguish you've laid

Four seasons once cherished are smashed and gone weird

As greed and destruction and landfills have leered.

So instead of the rain you so desperately need

We'll be raining our feathers until you take heed

Our pelicans are carrying, and now they’ll rain-drop

Feathers on your heads until you listen and stop.

Danny, you good bloke, you must lead this rabble

Please make them listen and act and not squabble

We're in this together, Earth's tears are all dry

Now its feathers will flood till you do, from up high.

The kookaburras flew stage left and right, and with that the pelicans gurgled up a torrent of multi-colored feathers, raining on the crowd. People moved closer together, hugged, and held. Feathers rained down, stuck to hot asphalt and everyone's sweaty skin. They cried and cried and cried.

Danny slumped to the path, taking in the feathered scene, but quickly sprang to his feet, arms flailing, shouting to the sky of patiently waiting, fluttering birds: "I accept your challenge!" He looked left and right, and up and down the street, and asked: "Who amongst you sniffling, mangy lot are with me?". As he headed off to the Town Hall, covered in feathers stuck to his sweaty, dusty, tear-stained skin, making a magnificent mayoral gown, a procession jumped up, following two-by-two, catching and picking up armfuls of raining feathers, gently with purpose, as if for the first time seeing what was to be done.