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At 8 o'clock this morning we were at the Parkwood Road horse yards tending
Skeeter, a pony we look after. I'm checking the pony's feet while junior Brat is
happily combing Skeeter's mane. Suddenly, Samantha chirps, "Dad, look!
There's a dark, Brown Falcon scavenging in the horse apples!" The "horse apples"
were horse droppings that had been raked into a heap, about 25 metres
away.
As I straightened up, the "falcon" took wing, flapped and soared, flapped
some more and soared off towards the north-east.
"Samantha," I proclaimed, "that is a Black Kite." I was able to watch
it for some ten seconds. I saw lots of Black Kites at the Alice Springs
rubbish dump in 1985 and again in 2002, as well as other Outback places. So,
without going through the diagnostic details, I'm sure it was a Black
Kite.
On the way home, Sami took my field guide from the glove box, consulted it
and said, "Yep, Black Kite, Milvus migraines."
"Don't be a headache," I countered. I have to counter quickly, otherwise
she'd keep on being a punning headache. Sometimes, I wish my Bratz were like
other young-twenties things who consider birding the boring pursuit of
dopey old Baby-boomers, then a bloke might get a bit of peace in which to pursue
his ornithology free from interjections of stupidity. Then again, if smarty
Brat hadn't been present this morning, I probably wouldn't have noticed the
kite.
John Layton
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