This year I have a wonderful new friend! I have seen and heard this yellow breasted bird around, and he was the most sociable bird that I have ever encountered, and when he was around I kept my catapult at the ready to frighten off the many cats that have now descended on my place, I suppose because no birds going to their different places anymore!
I have said before that it made my blood boil when people insist on bringing cats to a place where there are an abundance of this feathered beauties.
About my new friend, he used to sit on the pole at the back when I was busy painting, and would sing away on quite a few different tunes, the most popular one featuring the word 'ariole', and Nina, who was also a friend of this bird looked it up in her bird book, and she was sure that the bird was called a 'Yellow Ariole'.
But after having spent our cold winter months somewhere in Europe, this bird came back with a whole new vocabulary. That is of course if it was indeed the same bird. And he had a whole new outlook on life as well, as he now came to sit on the pole right in front of my front door, and with his lovely grey head held skew, he would look into my door, and sing the most plaintiff song, and inbetween all the sounds he made, the word 'adios' featured quite prominently.
He looked so lonely and sad with his round black eyes watching me intently, and he sang such a sad song, that I decided that there must be a lost love somewhere. As he was using the word 'adios' quite a lot, I decided that he must have met a girly in Europe, and she must have promised to leave her fatherland, that I think being Spain, and come to South Africa with her new found love. But, I thought, it was not to be, as a terrible storm blew up and separated the two lovers, maybe blowing the girly back to Spain, or perhaps she just decided not to immigrate.
I was really feeling sorry for the bird, and fed him some nice fruit that he didn't like, and some groundworms, that he did like. But then one morning he flew onto his usual perch, and after looking at me for a long time, he let out a high pitched 'prego!'
And here I thought he was pining for a Spanish maiden, when all the time he was a womanizer, who must have been playing with a Spanish, as well as an Italian lady's love, and now he is back in South Africa, having lost both! Oh, well, maybe he was just a lonely bird, all his friend having been killed off by the village cats, and thinking that, I stormed outside to put the fear of hell into the feline prowlers!