Mountain Tails Read Online Free Page A

branches of my stone fruit trees. Like sentries in castle turrets, they keep constant watch on their kingdom. For ages they stare fixedly at a spot in the apparently motionless paddock. It’s as if they are commanding a worm to emerge there by such concentrated power of will.
    In a cold wind they fluff up their feathers: basic off-white, elegantly speckled and heavily striped in chocolate brown, barred with black, underscored by amber, and with those sometimes hidden, so oftensurprising, sky-blue dabs and dashes on the wings. A backcombing breeze makes their flat heads look ruffled and peaked like punks, but their heavily made up eyes are not distracted from their task.
    Their beaks are big and tough and capacious, hooked at the end. Good for catching much bigger prey than worms or beetles, but that’s what’s on the menu in this clearing. Just a snack in between the morning and evening song sessions.
    These are Laughing Kookaburras, sometimes called Laughing Jackasses, the largest members of the world’s kingfisher family, all of whom are carnivorous for more than fish. This sort likes mice, as well as worms and insects and reptiles, and there are lots of small mouse-like marsupials here to make residency in my Refuge worthwhile. There are also lots of tree hollows, so it’s a good nesting and breeding place for kookaburra families.
    While we think of this kookaburra as our national Aussie icon, it was only indigenous to the eastern side of Australia—although not its drier areas—from Cape York in the north to Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. A paler, slightly smaller relative, the Blue-winged Kookaburra, also laughs, but in a less rollicking fashion, and it sticks to the more tropical parts of the country.
    With that massive beak, our Laughing Kookaburra was not a welcome introduction to the south-west of Western Australia, and to Tasmania and Kangaroo Island, where it is now established. West Australian farmers say our kookaburras prey on their fowl, which I’ve never heard of them doing here, but once out of their natural ecosystem, who knows?
    I’ve learnt that Laughing Kookaburras live for several decades and are stay-at-home family birds, partnering for life and keeping their offspring around them in large family groups, where all the older ones help their parents raise the nestlings.
    Human families used to do that in the pre-Pill days when four kids was the norm; six and up if you were Catholic, obeyed the Pope andrelied on the unreliable rhythm method; two was unusual, a bit sad, given that there must be a physical reason why you’d stopped there; and the rare only child and its parents were much pitied. Bogging in to help feed the littlies, wipe their noses, find the other sock, tie their shoelaces or keep them away from under Mum’s feet was the accepted cross of being older, just part of family life.
    As kookaburras haven’t heard about the Pill, things haven’t changed for them. My head knows that those morning and evening kooka choruses that echo around the ridges here are to help the different family groups re-establish their territorial boundaries, like auditory suburban paling fences. Yet my heart says they also do it for sheer joy, since their performance is so wholehearted, beaks pointing skywards, throats vibrating, as they sing the daylight in and out.
    For several years one kookaburra chose the railing at a corner of my verandah as his special vantage spot. I could open and shut the door, walk past, empty garbage, change boots, stockpile wood—and he would ignore me. Only now and then would this carved and painted effigy deign to momentarily turn ever so slightly towards me, giving the impression of a raised eyebrow even if he didn’t actually have one. Not being potential tucker or predator, I was quickly dismissed as of no interest.
    I’m watching one now: he’s sitting on top of a garden stake, and he’s not laughing. He’s