My gardening on the weekend included sweeping up the nuts and sticks on the verge following a feeding frenzy by a flock of black cockatoos that regularly visit a large tree at the front of our house.
A few hours later these pesky birds were back, cracking open gumnuts and sending them to the ground in dozens, to spread across the verge and all over the road.
Someone visiting a neighbour one day had commented on the menace and suggested that the tree should be chopped down. That resolution I couldn't accept, but a part of me still sighed at the mess that was caused so soon after I had swept up the last lot of gumnuts.
However, my frustration didn't last long, as I watched these magnificant birds (yes, magnificent, not pesky), and as I recognised their lunch in suburbia rather than further south, was a desperate act of survival.
Earlier this year, the Conservation Council of WA director Piers Verstegen said WA’s three endangered species of black cockatoo – Carnaby, Baudin and Forest Red-tailed – were starving to death because their habitat in the Swan Coastal Plain and South-West has largely been lost to logging, land clearing and bushfires.
The black cockatoos are a timely reminder that my short term desire for a comfortable life needs to be put in its proper place as I consider the greater good.
... and maybe there are other aspects of life where the same principle applies.
certainly we have much to learn from watching nature and recognising our world view needs upgrading occasionally whne we get too precious about WIIFM!
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