Message from Barbara Cannata

Hi I have to tell you some news about a certain bird that has been coming into my front yard for about 8 years now. I am sure she is the female and she brought her mate with her about a year after first coming to our yard. Her mate was unbelievably timid and would not come anywhere near us when he saw us. However "our" pee wee as we like to call her was unbelievably trusting and would often come down to get food we left on the ground for her. Over these years she has become so tame with us that she flies down and takes food out of our hands. Whenever I weed, I save the curl grubs for her and she loves these. Over the past year the mate has lost his distrust of us and comes down close to us now also and even gets some curl grubs if I throw them over to him.

In the early part of this year, I saw "our" pee wee (or magpie lark) had string on her feet and she could hardly walk. After many days I finally managed to catch her and take all the string off her feet. Her legs healed up and all was good until two weeks ago when she came back to our yard with her feet all caught up with string again. She couldn't put one leg down and was trying to hop on one leg to get food. We managed to catch her again and take all the string off both legs. Now she is still limping slightly but is recovering. She still trusts us and comes to our hands to get food, so we are very happy as I feel we have saved her life twice. It is so lovely to see her in our yard. We don't feed her too regularly because we know this would be wrong, but I still find the odd curl grub for her to have. Well, that is my story and I hope you enjoyed hearing the good ending.

Cheers, Barbara Cannata