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Early yesterday while it was still cool, clear and calm we went to Ye Olde
Macgregor Sewage Wurkes and soon found a male Cockateil sporting the plumage of
a wild bird. I began to admire the morning, " Look at that pale blue,
watercolour sky and those negligee white clouds. Hans Heysen would have rendered
it nicely."
Suddenly Junior Brat chipped in, "But could old Heysen paint swifts? Sure
enough, there were ten White-throated Needletails making their undulating
way across the Heysenesque firmament, 200m away. They looked incongruous without
their usual background of guncotton storm curtains.
Back home I saw a female Common Blackbird hopping across the yard. It
appeared to be a dull grey rather than the usual dowdy brown. However, the
breast plumage caught my attention, It had a faint but
discernible rufous wash. I thought of the American Robin Turdus
migratorius. There is, of course, the possibility it had come in contact
with something that had imparted this coloration to the feathers.
John K. Layton.
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