I was standing at the veggie garden gate yesterday chatting with Ric who was on his hands and knees planting tomatoes, when a family of grey fantails flew in to join our conversation.
At first, they were hovering around Ric dive bombing the insects fleeing from the dirt he was digging up with his trowel. Then they flew over to me to land on the fence just an arm’s length away. Maybe they were calling me to get my hands dirty like Ric, but I wasn’t having it. I had writing to do and I was just taking a break.
We watched the tiny birds as they crisscrossed the garden creating invisible threads of connection between us.
Photo Credit: Carolyn Tate. Three speckled grey fantail eggs.
We wondered if they were the fantail chicks I’d spotted ten months before in a nest woven of fine grasses and cobwebs. It was cleverly attached to the branch of a plum tree that was showing no signs of bearing fruit. The branch was not even the width of a pencil and right at waist height.
The nest was in a precarious position, exposed to the wind and potential predators and at risk of harm by unaware humans.
Despite the conditions, three delicate cream-coloured, brown-speckled eggs sat snuggly together in the nest, each one no bigger than my thumbnail.
Over the course of two weeks, I stopped by to check on them from a distance, as the mother sat patiently on the nest. She didn’t seem perturbed by me. In fact, it seemed as though she trusted me and was inviting me in to witness natures beauty up close and personal.
Photo Credit: Carolyn Tate. Two birds hatched from the three eggs.
Sixteen days later, I returned to the nest to find two of the three eggs had hatched. I could just get close enough to take a photo while the mother was away searching for insects.
A day or two later, I watched the chicks fly from their nest, their parents hovering nearby making sure they made it safely to a nearby branch.
And now in the veggie garden, here were the family again, all confident and courageous.
‘Chip, chip, chip,’ went their constant and distinct tinkling whistle. They were speaking to us in bird language we couldn’t understand. We both responded, me with little bird-like whistling sounds, Ric with a ‘hello little ones.’
Photo Credit: Carolyn Tate. Ready to flee the nest.
They flitted around entertaining us with their antics regaling us with their non-stop chit-chat. At one point, I held out my upturned hand to one as a gesture of welcome. It flew straight at me hovering within inches of my palm before darting away and perching again on the fence.
Not for one second would our plucky and perky little friends stop to allow a quick photo. It was the most delightful ten minutes of the day and it’s made me smile every time I think about it.
Today, I returned to the garden a few times to reconnect with them and contemplate my increasing desire to deepen my connection with the more than human world.
Stories don’t have to be grand to move people to remake our world. They can be tiny stories like this one.
It reminds me of the old Chinese proverb ‘the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can be felt on the other side of the world.’
Only this time it’s no butterfly, it’s a fantail.
Because your story matters, now more than ever.
With love
Carolyn Tate
Author | Educator | Community Builder | Author of The Purpose Project & Brave Women Write
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