The Birds - Not quite Hitchcock

I know it might seem that I am a bit obsessed with Lorikeets, but come on! Are these guys cute or what? For some reason - was it the rain? the chilly weather? our charming company? Who knows? But for some reason, we were visited by 18 lorikeets on our balcony this afternoon. Tim was a bit distracted by the Pakistan/England Cricket Test Match or he would have gone for these photos.... but as I said, he was distracted. As we speak, he is spellbound by the Australia/Uruguay world cup qualifying match. He actually breaks for an occasional interlude with nature -- but usually only during halftime or if it's a cricket match - tea.

Eighteen loris was a record for us. Usually we are visited only by Romeo and Juliet (see past voyeuristic post), but for some reason, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors.... all decided to visit us this afternoon. Fortunately, I had plenty of grapes to entice them with, and despite the occasional squawk and grab -- they would allow other birds to gently persuade them to cough up a little extra grape and share. I'll upload some of the extra photos to Flickr, so you might enjoy checking those out.

Our nightly visitor, Ms. Possum (I'm convinced she's pregnant), will completely enjoy the bounty of fallen grapes she finds below our balcony tonight. She might have enough to eat that she won't have to endure Sammy's frantic barking and rushes toward the window.... and in fact, we might be able to sleep through the night.

Cheers, Judi