I’ve been enjoying watching the garden birds outside my ‘home-office’ (my bedroom). House sparrows are the most common visitors, closely followed by these tauhou – silvereyes – tempted by the sugar water feeder I set out when lockdown began. There’s a resident male blackbird, an occasional bouncing piwakawaka, and warou overhead. In the evenings, tūī fly back from their neighbourhood haunts to the forest across the road, and starlings stream in long skeins down from the hills into the city to roost. Gulls – red-bills and black-backs – waft in the thermals overhead. Occasionally I hear the sharp ‘kek-kek-kek!’ from one of the kārearea that has a territory in the forest nearby as it strafes out over the neighbourhood to hunt. I’ve seen kererū flying overhead with purpose, and heard a single korimako bell out from a tall banksia nearby. At night there is a chorus of ruru, and the other night one landed on the satellite dish just above my window. It’s nice to be surrounded by so much activity, and to learn the daily rhythms of the birds.