I went today to the recently burned area of Kartagarrup King’s Park and walked along the paths between the burned and unburned land. Some trees were lost—I spotted a banksia. But many were coming back—sheoaks shooting new, stick-like leaves, banksias bearding all along the stem and branches, marri’s flowering white, oblivious, xanthorea and wisteria coming back from the ground below. The understory groundcover so much clearer than the bushy and leaf-covered otherside of the path. And then, next to a marri, a red-flowering gum—distinct at this time of year amongst so many trees flowering white and yellow, like the marri, the paperbark, the ilyarrie, the tuart, even tea trees here or there. But here the red flowering gum stood, seemingly unaffected by the red of the fire that had just been—that would also have been somewhat orangelike, like the fruiting flesh on the Zamia seeds seen earlier this morning in Bold Park. The red of the tree’s small flowers falling also to the blackened ash of the ground, which still smelled like burnt earth—the dropped flowers a new red on the land, similar to the tail of karak the red cockatoo that now flies over, or the ones a moment ago seen on a nearby pine post, large headed and black as coal, with a tail of fire-orange to red, alive and burning. And then, above, moving amongst the flowers of the red-flowering gum, both on the burned side of the bush and the other, a group of birin birin rainbow bee eaters doing exactly that, beaks full, alighting on dead branches high up, from time to time, to eat or sometimes bash their bee-food, before swallowing. This smaller bird is all rainbow colourful and long beaked, the first ones I think I’ve ever seen, shooting through the trees with seemingly symmetrical triangular like wings, though not as quick as the white, yellow, black flash of bandiny the New Holland honeyeater. The bee-eaters sing together, and remind me of cicadas or crickets chirping, and the whole country sounds alive. And then, finally, into the scene lands noolarga the black-faced cuckoo shrike, all white-grey, except for his sooty visage, here to deliver something. I sing a little. He moves away. Then comes back. A messenger, or so I’ve been told.