Roman festival…

CHRIS BENNETT had a splendid Christmas week.

I SHOULD tell you about Miriam.

Miriam is a hadeda ibis who has taken up residence in the fig tree above my balcony.

She arrived about a month ago, amid much trumpeting. Miriam and her mate, Caesar, proceeded to build what I imagine Miriam, were she able, would call a nest. This rickety, precarious bundle of sticks and twigs sits uncertainly on a fork of one of the tree’s branches, looking rather like a ground plan of the Germiston railway junction.

Miriam eyed me, her eye like a sparkling piece of coal, with great suspicion.

Before long she was sitting on a clutch of eggs; how many I couldn’t, at that juncture, tell. During this broody period Caesar fetched and carried for her, occasionally relieving her patient sitting. He spent much of the day in the tree opposite, a milk wood, from whence he guarded his domain.

The sun’s early horizon glow, around a quarter past four, is the time for birds to wake up; and the rest of the world, in Miriam’s view, shall wake up too. No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished. A conversation followed between Miriam and her mate, sitting about ten centimetres apart, at a decibel level that would shatter a whisky glass, and likely create the need for one.

He left for work; she stayed.

At first this morning alarum was startling. I have never been so awake so quickly. Now I have grown accustomed to her voice, and I smile into my pillow.

One day I noticed a change in the patterns of the birds’ comings and goings. The nest had two nestlings.

I read somewhere once that birds are the remnants of dinosaur life on this planet. I can well believe it. Miriam’s two offspring gave a new dimension to the meaning of cute and ugly. We called them Romulus and Remus; Romulus hatched first.

Some three weeks later they had grown almost to Miriam’s size. They were soon likely to fly.

The idea reminded me of the story of the little boy who asked his father why the hadedas made such a racket on taking off. The reply was, “Because they are afraid of heights”.

Time passed, and a few days ago the youngsters made a discovery: vocal chords. It is taking quite a long time for the novelty to wear off. The early morning calls (never was there anything less like a dawn chorus) now have a distinctly competitive edge; there is a race to see who can shout the loudest. And the longest.

Now we have reached the big issue – flying school.

Romulus was the first out of the tree and took to the air as he should – to the manner born. Remus was slower, and as I write is still sitting, hunched and peeved, on the branch. At least he is out of the nest.

Yesterday I watched delighted as Caesar came home, stalked along the branch to an unsuspecting Remus and stuck his beak under Remus’s tail, tipping him off the branch. The ensuing acrobatics were spectacular; Remus furiously flapped everything that would flap and screamed at the top of his not inconsiderable voice. He fell to the branch below, hung on, and shook his feathers and his dignity and went, clearly, into a black sulk. Flight can’t be far behind.

I expect this feathered family will have a splendid 2011, as I hope you will.

CB