Author Archives: jbstubley

The Almost Glossed-Over Ibis

Perry Lakes this morning where they’re now channeling water in from nearby lake, and the levels are still high. Koorodoor the egret, ngoonan the teals, coots, a white ibis, and then what at first seems like a straw-necked ibis. All of these I’ve seen before and known. But something keeps me locked onto the darker coloured ibis—a bird so often overlooked, given a derogatory name here in Australia by colonisers. In Egypt though—Thoth—the god of knowledge, writing, wisdom and scribes. What we value reflected in thinking and language. Everything contains something worthwhile. I stay with the ibis. it moves a little, and I get a better look, then another. And something I might have initially glossed over grows clearer. The first glossy ibis I can recall seeing. And I wonder how much else I might have missed.

Fire Area Kartagarrup

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.

Antless Kathmandu

One thing I’ve reflected on from hiking the forested foothills of Kathmandu, is the obvious absence of ants. I don’t think I saw one. In the dried mud and high ridges, on the dusty roads, on the side of the ridges leaning down, not one. Here, in Australia, amid the sand of silica or limestone, they are almost always to be expected, cultivating the old land. In the upspringing claymud of the Himalayan foothills, nothing.

Wayan and Kwirlam

Wayan the whitefaced heron and kwirlam the purple swamphen on the dry lakebed. Wayan is still, white-faced grey, and silent, watching something in the dry mud, frozen mid-step and ready to strike, spear like. Kwirlam, all dark and colourful purple chested blue, with red nose and beak, comes up behind him, a little off to the side, and adopts the same position for a while, mirroring, mimicking, pausing mid step, and looking over, round as the heron is straight, full as the heron is line-like. The swamphen moves on, into the reeds, where he noisily and colourfully feeds, often on grass stems or seeds. The heron finally shoots out and pounces, something living soon no longer so in its beak. The one bird as if fallen down from the skies, thieving bugs and insects with a flick. The other, as if risen from the earth, like the sound of its guttural cry, as wilful as the heron is awkward and barely descended. The heron, when he does fly, flaps jerking at the air; the swamphen barely makes it off the ground, it’s feet dangling, ready to touchdown again, destined to be the only bird who stays when the lake finally, completely dries.

Landscapes

Earth and Air
In Perth basin a flat landscape of sand and limestone; a place of earth and air; birds, butterflies, insects and wildflowers of all colours; a place where light and earth breaks down, catabolic.

In Kathmandu valley foothills of clay; also earth and air; birds, butterflies, insects but colour less than Perth; light and earth is more upbuilding, anabolic.

In Himalayas mountains of granite; also earth and air; limited life; light catabolic, earth anabolic.

Water to Fire
In Bali an island from coast to mountains; water to fire; birds and insects almost muted; more life-filled.

Fire
The Phillipines from coast to mountains; country of fire and I.

Upbuilding Mountains

Arriving in another place—like this place, Kathmandu, with Himalayas visible beyond these forested foothills, their snow-capped peaks and grey rocks all hard and granite-like, while here, in the hills, the roads and cutaways are all dried clay—here it’s easy to contrast the difference to the flat sandy limestone of the Perth basin with everything, like rain, pulling down and away. Here, however, rising from the Kathmandu valley, up the first foothills, and up again all the way to the massive top-of-the-world peaks of the Himalayas it’s possible to be carried that way also inwardly. Up and up, rising from beneath your feet. One polarity, one extreme helps the other end of the spectrum be seen. One draws down, almost as if pulling the sun down into the earth, from the head, into the feet. While here, something rises up, not the earth exactly, but like some other kind of sun, from the earth, from the feet to the head above.

Kathmandu Sun

Climbing the forested foothills above Kathmandu amongst the different varieties of pines, some rhododendrons, planted raspberries and even kiwi fruit, walking a ridgeline, it’s easy to hear and sometimes find with the eyes a whole range of different birds—from black kites circling high above, eight together some days, swallows darting through the canopy, small birds with white eyes, tiny birds they call tits, grey-headed warblers, long-tailed minivets bright as glowing coals in the nighttime fires, small birds with yellow breasts, blackbirds, crows, other long-tailed friends—all out with the morning sun, singing, darting, sitting on branches above the ridge, diving down the other side, belonging, it seems, to the outing of the sun. And then maybe you’ll see bees smaller and larger, black and yellow on raspberry and other flowers. And maybe on the ground, on tiny white flowers there’ll be a butterfly orange or white, or even one I saw a bluey grey, fluttering quickly to finally slowly alight on flower, folding up the outerside of its now brown wings, disappearing almost, leaflike, only to fly on in a small blue cloud again. Or maybe there’ll be a tiny ladybug red and black on large green leaf, or even folding up its wings after landing on the dusty clay soil. All of them much harder to find on cloudy, colder days. But on this, sunny warm day of early spring, they seem to have been called up and out—seem to have risen from the dark and the cold and the shadows…with the morning sun. 

Beings of higher places, it seems, alighting on all the trees and plants which wait for their arrival, tethered as they are to Earth.

Kathmandu Haze

In the Kathmandu morning valley, on days clear of clouds, you can clearly see from forested foothills above the haze of pollution and smoke sitting on the city like a blanket—a layer of orangey brown that obscures most of the city but doesn’t cut off the views of the highest peaks of the Himalayas beyond. And then, as the day progresses, the sun pours in, the valley warms, the traffic increases, and gradually the hazy blanket rises, climbing up the view of the mountains beyond, the hills your standing on obviously engulfed, all the time the smoky hazy line rising higher until, come noon or early after, the peaks of the mountains can no longer be seen. But clearly into view rises below: Kathmandu.

Back of the Head

Sometimes I find when I visit other places I realise how clear the light is in Western Australia. In other places the horizon often seems hazy, muted, softly defined. But in South Western Australia the light is so clear it’s almost as if you can see beyond the horizon, then beyond the next one, all the way around, and around, until you spy, finally, in one startling faroff vision, the back of your own head looking on.