Cockatoo morning, 9 May 2020

Sometimes the cockatoos arrive in a great gang, each with a crown of lemon yellow plumes differently organised as if they each gave consideration to their own hair style. What do they see when they look at you with their deep black eyes? A poor non-bird person without the means to fly? Dedalus the master inventor made wings for his son Icarus to fly like a bird from the island of Crete to new freedoms. Intoxicated with being a creature of air he flew too near the sun and the wax holding this wings melted, so that he fell to his death. Plato thought humans had a deep affinity with the wonder of birds.  In Phaedrus he says, ‘the emanation of beauty received by the eye ‘makes the feathers of the soul prick with longing, because in its original state the soul is feathered all over’. It was once estimated, after weighing a person on the point of death and immediately afterwards, that the soul weighs 30 grams, which is the same weight as a small whorl or button. 'The soul is like a bird, and with wings the soul flies' said a museum label on some eggs found in a tomb. This is the wonder of a bird alighting near you.

Diana Wood Conroy, 'Cockatoo morning', watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 9 May 2020