A Guide To Birds In Suburban Melbourne.

All over the world, birds flock to city centres and suburbs for an easy meal and plentiful nesting opportunities, and Melbourne is no different. We play host to an astounding range of avian visitors, and it is my hope to present you with an interesting and illuminative guide to our varied feathered friends.

Common Seagull

The seagull is present on every continent on earth, so there's not many people who don't know what one looks like! While colour and markings vary, the picture above is indicative of a standard seagull. Also pictured is its natural state, i.e; standing around waiting for someone to throw food at it. Depending on the personality of the gull, it will either charge in and seize the food as quickly as possible, and then fly away to a safe spot to feed, or stand at the back of the crowd looking helpless and hungry because it's a wimp. Darwin's Theory of Evolution suggests that these timid members of the gull family die starving and alone in a bin or somewhere comparatively awful.

Common Pigeon

Another bird that's present worldwide, the common pigeon is a suburban and city fixture, proudly strutting around while single-mindedly pursuing its species agenda; covering the entire planet in bird shit. Not a great city in the world exists that hasn't been bombarded by jets of runny foulage from these laughably pointless birds. Whenever I see one, the words of the great anthropologist and comedian Bill Bryson pop into my head, regarding pigeons at a train station; 'Here are my instructions for being a pigeon. 1. Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items. 2. Take fright at someone waking along the platform and fly off to a girder. 3. Have a shit. 4. Repeat.'

Australian Raven

This bird is the tits. Created and loosed upon the world by the same type of people who created Black Metal, this bird has two defining characteristics: Looking awesome, and totally not giving a fuck about anything. When the raven flies through other birds territories, it will prompt a mass ambush by the other birds, who swoop it and attempt to beak-fuck it. The raven just bird-shrugs and eats a dropped McFlurry off the pavement, then flies off to land on a grave and look metal.

Noisy Miner

This avian fuckwit is a waste of feathers. It has an awful, ear-piercing call that it uses all the fucking time, especially when I walk my dog at the park, or down the street, or pretty much anywhere you can find birds. It is relatively new in suburbia, and I'm seriously considering buying a Junior Science Kit off the internet to see how feasible it is to create a bird cancer that only affects the Noisy Miner. Then I can laugh at it when it gets bird chemotherapy. On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate this bird a solid 'wet-fart'.

Crested Pigeon

The Crested Pigeon is a flying contradiction. One the one hand, it's a pigeon, and therefore demands about as much respect as a vegan, or an anal polyp. But on the other, its got a hairstyle that says 'let's rock' and shows it doesn't give a flying fuck (pun intended) what other birds think of it.

Common Myna

Ugh, this bird. It is ubiquitous, and so very vanilla. Even its name just says 'Common'. This bird would listen to One Direction and take photos of its every meal to post on the bird equivalent of Facebook, and each photo would only ever get one 'like' from another fucking Myna that also listens to One Direction.
It's brown, for fuck's sake. It'd work at the Australian Taxation Office and consider Nando's upper-class dining. I don't hate this bird, and I don't like it. I just don't think about it, ever.

Rainbow Lorikeet

I can't help but like this bird. Another new addition to the inner suburbs in the past decade, the Rainbow Lorikeet fly in flocks, all of them shouting the bird equivalent of 'FUCK!' at the top of their lungs, all the time. They don't seems to have any other setting.
I've also never seen one smeared across the road, which seems to prove that shouting 'FUCK!' all the time may be indicative of genius-level intelligence in the ornithological world. Not that it should take a genius to figure out that if you have wings, and therefore own the sky, you don't need to swoop across a main road three feet above the ground.

House Sparrow

Shit.

Just tiger things.

Today, I punched a tiger so hard that money came out. No point in writing anything else, really. I'm not going to top that.

O Father, O Satan, O Sun.

Last night I saw my favourite metal band, Behemoth. Consummate musicians, with a demanding stage presence, it was worth every penny. And with support from Watain and Bolzer, two other respected and impressive bands, it was almost a mini-festival.
I wish I could say I knew every song, but I just didn't. Seems I need to delve into the back catalogue a little bit more, spend some time with Thelema.6 and Demigod.
Watching guys like this play, it always inspires me to dedicate more time to my own instruments, and as I leave the gig, I'm full of thoughts of spending 6 hours a day practising, really knuckling down and learning to play Eruption in the space of 3 weeks.
Then I go home and eat ice cream.
One thing that really annoyed me was lack of foresight on behalf of the merchandising team. I queued before the doors opened, but at least 300 people got in before me. I went straight to the merchandise stall and dutifully stood in line, only to be told they didn't have any tour shirts left in medium, only XXL. Really? Not everyone is the size of a house, you know. Print some more fucking mediums!

Quibbles aside, I had a great time, and even drank a Coke, because I'm a rebel. I'd rate this a 'Yes' out of 10.