Hawaiian bird orchestra, led by the shrieking francolin.

Usually I write about life that lives in the ocean.  Today, birds. 

These beautiful Hawaiian  islands are filled with birds, and  the birds are filled with song.  The resulting orchestra  keeps changing instruments depending on the time of day, how far above sea level you are, and even the season (yes, we have seasons !)

I live right by the ocean, in an area always quite warm, always quite dry.   It's a tiny geographical niche, and some birds choose it above anywhere else.

The francolins are a case in point.  A local  kind of quail, with the most outlandish loud squack you can imagine.  This little tan bird scuttles unassumingly  around on the ground, loves dustbaths, can fly but prefers the scuttling  around way of  getting places. Where it really stands out is the squack.  It stands still, takes in a big breath so its chest puffs up, leans back its tiny head and then pushes the head  forward really fast as it sounds forth with this Amazing Piercing  Call.  Sometimes I swear one of them is going to tumble over  giving this performance.  A second shriek requires all the above steps get repeated.

At dawn, all kinds of birds seem to wait for just one single francolin yell to happen. Within a second,  the air is filled with the full orchestra  of all kinds of birds at full blast.  After a few minutes of this, they settle down for the day.Then  for the rest of the day  you can differentiate one bird from another, one kind of call from another.  But dawn is quite the community event. 

Then there's midnight.  Sometimes a car will drive along this country- road-by-the-sea in the middle of the night, and that's when I realize how many tiny birds nest in the one big flowered tree between my lanai (porch where I sleep outdoors) and the road. I guess the car noise is a disturbance to all  these sleeping beauties in the silence of their tree, because there is an instant all-together-now hue and cry, and then twenty seconds later, they are all-at-once instantly still once again.

I find it deeply energizing, to work at my computer amid the song of birds. Quieting, focusing, energizing all at once.  

Big  big mahalo (Hawaiian thanks) to the birds.