Page 7 of Birds of a Feather

‘Elise!’ he bellowed as he strode towards Gran with his arms outstretched. ‘How are you going? You keeping well?’

He hugged Gran tightly. They had worked together on and off for the past forty years and enjoyed a productive professional history and a genuine fondness for each other.

‘Great to see you again, Beth,’ he said, turning to shake my hand.

Once we’d unloaded our equipment from the car, the four of us made our way through the open eucalypt woodland towards the population of warty swan orchids. Emily took deliberate, purposeful strides, while Jack stopped regularly to point out a lizard he’d spotted or to listen for a bird call. Gran seemed to be walking more slowly than usual, especially up the inclines. Admittedly, the small pea-sized rocks underfoot did make it slippery.

The undulating terrain of this patch of bushland was why it was still there; my great-great-grandfather chose to clear the flatter land to the east. It was the easier option by comparison, and now this patch of bush was one of only a handful of natural areas left in the district. The landscape was dotted with powderbark wandoos; their slender creamy, skin-coloured trunks were covered in pockmarks and blemishes. The deepest indents were tinged with a deep red-brown colour, as if blood had coagulated in the wounds.

After about fifteen minutes, we reached the population of warty swan orchids, which was marked out by purple tape and protected under a sheet of fine netting.

‘Hello, my little darlings,’ Gran cooed.

Jack laughed.

‘What?’ Gran feigned ignorance. ‘Plants that know they are loved grow better, you know.’

Emily rolled her eyes good-naturedly. As a scientist myself, I assumed it was because she disapproved of Gran’s anthropomorphising of the plants.

‘Well, it seems to have worked,’ Jack gushed. ‘Look at them all!’

We got to work counting and measuring the plants. The original plants looked healthy, and there were seven new ones. The wasps were still missing in action, but the group was confident in its ‘build it, and they will come’ approach. It would just take time. And a bit more sexual healing.

By the time we tallied our findings and gathered up our equipment, the sun was directly overhead, which shortened the shadows and hazed the horizon. The hum of the insects had become louder and more shrill.

‘Are you okay, Gran?’ I asked, noticing she’d stopped to catch her breath as we walked back towards the cars.

‘Of course I am,’ she replied, slightly breathlessly. ‘Any fitter and I’d be dangerous.’

Gran looked to Emily as if to check whether she was making a mental note about her diminished capacity to carry the equipment bags. I knew she feared the day they would deem her an occupational health and safety risk and no longer let her participate in the surveys.

About halfway up the last incline she stopped abruptly.

‘Ohhhh! Look what I’ve found,’ she exclaimed, pointing to a long red-and-black feather laying against a rock. ‘A red-tailed black cockatoo feather’.

‘That’s a beauty, Elise,’ Jack said. ‘We call those cockies “Kaarak”, which means “black feather”. They were my mother’s totem.’

Gran picked up the feather, and rotated it between two fingers. The incandescent orange-red hues of the barbs glowed with the sun behind them.

‘When I was young, these birds used to descend on this farm in their thousands, you know,’ Gran said. ‘You’d hear them well before you’d see them, and then they’d flock to the eucalypts around the place.’

Gran removed her wide-brimmed hat and slid the quill of the feather into the band.

‘Their favourite tree was the old marri next to the outhouse. They’d pry open the honkey nuts with their beaks, eat the seed and then drop the shell. It made the ground really slippery. The challenge of getting to the loo without falling over or copping a nut to the head was enough to make you shit yourself. And that was before you checked the underside of the seat for redbacks and the long-drop for snakes.’

We all laughed.

After we said our farewells and Emily and Jack drove off, Gran lingered with the car door open and scanned the landscape, as if adding additional colour and detail to her mind’s eye picture of the place she’d known her whole life.

‘What a good day at the office,’ she beamed.

I couldn’t have agreed more.

Chapter 6

Beth

The next day at work, I was typing up meeting notes from a particularly productive discussion about a tract of bush that offered quenda – a species of bandicoot – a stronghold in suburbia, when an email notification appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen.

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