Again we were woken up by the sound of rain this morning in Sydney. This week just reminded me of the wet week in Canberra a couple of months back. So wet. So long. But this morning I was very lucky. I had not one, but two very colourful visitors at my window! The Lorikeets!

To lighten the room a little bit I thought it’d best to open the blinds really wide. As I opened it, one bird flew and hopped onto the windowsill of our fourth floor apartment, then stayed just right there right in front of me. Then 5 seconds after, the second one flew in. Both tried to find shelter from the rain that was pouring hard. At first they kept to themselves, but then they started to walk a little closer and closer to each other, until they finally stood next to each other, body to body really, as if to seek warmth from each other.

Lucky me, I was there watching the whole thing. My camera was only at an arm’s length away, I quickly, and quietly -even though I was not sure whether they could be bothered by the noise that I made due to the loud rain and wind- prepared my camera and readied myself to take some birdy pictures.

Watching these two birds that close was so entertaining. Their colours are amazing, and their feathers even looked a bit more fluffed up than normal. Maybe like me they also suffered from frizzy hair thanks to the rain. The things that they did, the little synchronised tilt of their heads, those little hop hippety hop to move closer to the other for warmth, or a sudden peck from one bird for reason only they knew, it was just amazing to watch. Thirty centimeter was the mere distance between me and the birds. The kids were enjoying this live nature show as well next to me. I was not sure whether the birds could see me with the window closed, but I was glad they were facing me/window and not the other way. Or maybe they were watching us too and they were equally entertained by our behaviour, I wasn’t sure.

I took several pictures while keeping the window still closed. I did not want to shoo them away by opening it. But then I had to resort to manual focus, because with the auto focus my lens frequently got confused with the window glass; that it took the glass as the focus and not the Lorikeets behind it. Once I thought I had enough acceptable pictures with that window closed, I took a step further by opening the window bit by bit. Because I thought the bottom of the window was a bit dirty, maybe I could get better pictures without the glass between us. Surely enough, just one short slide up of the window startled them, so I continued opening it larger as quietly as I could. They did not stay longer after that. Probably just 5 more shots from me then they were gone. They did not sit together cosily like before, they were so aware of me they were nervously moving this way and that before they flew away. Good thing the rain eased up a bit. I hope they found a better shelter after that because the rain just did not want to quit. It’s going to be wet until the end of this week, unfortunately…