It’s odd how so many Australian birds look prettier than they sound. It’s my first evening on Kangaroo Island and raucous shrieks and squawks are accompanying my seaside stroll in the sleepy village of American River. Though the calls are anything but musical, the birds that are making them – rainbow-bright lorikeets and silver-and-candyfloss galahs – are as beautiful as the stately gum trees growing along the shore, their sculptural, twisted trunks all weathered and worn by salt, sand and time.
Similarly unmelodic are the black cockatoos flapping over the treetops on slow, deliberate wingbeats that seem barely sufficient to keep them aloft. I smile when an Australian magpie chimes in as if showing the others how to do it. For me, these birds’ gentle warbling is the definitive sound of Down Under.
