Tauhou

They come in silence, their presence only betrayed by fleeting shadows across the lawn or the sudden twitch of a leaf or small branch of a nearby tree. They come as a gang, five or six of them, one never far from another. They chatter rapidly in sibilant whispers as they settle nervously on the flaming spines of the red hot pokers where, clinging with hairpin-like claws, they seek mites and nectar. They weigh little and disturb the flowers even less than the gentle breeze that occasionally moves the filaments.

Behind the macadamia tree I wait for them, the remote release of the camera lightly held in hand. I wait as I once waited when coarse angling for my float to bob, the minutes stretching to infinity as my mind does nothing and everything.

Suddenly a bird is there, in exactly the right place for the pre-focused telephoto lens to catch him, the little greeny-yellowy passerine called variously silvereye, waxeye, white-eye or the older Maori onomatopoeic Tauhou.

The shutter clicks, he's gone.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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