I AW F M EN T ORI N G PR O G R A M
A STORY ABOUT A
BIRD AND FIRE UNLIKE OTHER BIRDS, IT DOESN'T LIKE THE DENSE NEW GROWTH POST FIRE.
BY DIANA KUCHINKE
The swing-seat has a gun-metal grey, mild-steel A-frame, with polyester cushions. We didn’t plan for its home to be where it stands, it just ended up there because under the roof-line of the house, it is out of the weather. During the years I worked on my PhD data analysis and writeup, I often ended up on this seat. It was where I reflected, immersed in the thoughts that filled my head, trying to apply reasoned logic to reams of pages covered with data
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wildfire
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JANUARY - MARCH 2021
and graphs, and notes that sometimes made absolutely no sense whatsoever. On this one particular day, I was drained of life. That was often the case by late afternoon. It was dusk. I was holding a vodka martini. That was also often the case. And I was trying to apply some biological reasoning to my thought patterns. The laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) was the only bird out of 56 species I had observed over two
