Early morning Christmas visitors

There are two events that we can rely on 

between going to bed on Christmas Eve

and getting up on Christmas Day.

The first, of course, is a quiet visit from the big man in the red suit.

The second is any or all of our children waking up

and bouncing out of their beds

only to bounce into our bed, usually before it gets light,

all in the name of Christmas excitement.

You can't quite call this visit quiet
but, to be fair,
it is usually a tempered excitement
as they bring their Christmas stockings in
to share what they have scored from Santa.

So to be woken up by a cacophony of screeches

was a bit of an (unpleasant) surprise.

(-and believe me,

I now understand the true meaning of the word cacophony)

By the time I ventured outside to see what was causing the racket,
hubby had broken up the fight and
there was a little kookaburra,
who appeared a bit spaced out,
sitting quietly not far from our front door

while a much bigger kookaburra

was sitting in the gum tree outside our front fence.

We scared away the big boy

(yes, we made the judgement call that he was the bully and instigator)

and checked out the little guy

who was abnormally still and quiet for a wild bird.

We think that he or she was shocked

and, even when a little scared by our approach, 

he couldn't manage to fly onto our low verandah wall.

We gave him some water

and some shelter in case the bully returned

and we gave him some time and space to recover
(while we went inside to find the phone number of Fauna Rescue..just in case)

A little later he was close by on a lower limb of our gum tree,

showing interest in us and obviously capable of flying.

He was certainly in no hurry to fly away
and we were glad that he seemed to be OK.

For once, we appreciated that the wake-up that we get most Christmas day mornings,
while unpleasantly early,
is by human youngsters.
However dreadful a noise my kids can make,
(and it is pretty dreadful when they put their minds to it)
I think that kookaburras would beat them hands down.