Take off

Well I guess it is going to be one of those days. It's not everyday you wake to find youself perched on a thick branch 100 feet above the rainforest floor, but such is life.

Woken by a ungodly screech that seems to come from inches away, I immediately notice that my field is vision is vast, I mean I can see behind, in front, above and below all at once. With a little movement of my head I look down, two off-grey coloured wrinkled legs with clawed feet, great. How I wish I knew ahead of time so I could do a little prep work; it's not easy learning to hunt krill in the deep dark waters using sonar one day to then be grazing on tufts on grass on semi frozen tundra the next. I won't complain though, the programmed behaviours should kick in soon, plus, I did sign up for this. Time to get to it. Follow the routine: complete a check of surroundings to assess for immediate danger, trust the instincts of whatever you become, these instincts will keep you alive. I shift my weight from side to side the branch moves with my motion, I must have some heft. Bright red breast feathers, long tail, clearly some type of parrot. Tropical jungle environment which seems to have the gain turned to 11, yep, defintitley some sort of parrot. Now we are talking, I have been looking forward to this.

Nodding my head with content as it feels like the thing to do, I admit to myself that I love being a bird. These are the days that make all the times when I am blind and wriggling underground, floating about waiting for some 30 tonne marine mammal to filter me into it's stomach, or wallowing in a mud pit to keep cool, seem to be worth the bother. I know what you are thinking, 'how could you spend a whole 24 hours with an insatiable desire chow down on dung, or harrassing a poor ibex to exhaustion before eating its internal organs', well I would say to you spend a day as a bird and then tell me if it is all worth it.

I ain't no sparrow. As I stretch my wings and bite down on a branch with my powerful rounded beak, I get that feeling you only get when have been at the bottom of the food chain and have found yourself higher up. No I won't be hunting anything down today, but I also won't have to be on guard for being taken out by anything bigger than a football.

When it comes to bird days I usually will wait about 10 minutes before trying to see what I can do, it may seem like you just have to flap your wings and look where you want to go, but believe me it is a lot harder than that. It is always worth waiting a bit for some innate brain functions come to kick in. While I wait I let out a screech which is consumed by the thick foliage, it is answered by 3 distinct answering calls, they seem close but I dont see my crew.

A few more minutes pass and I notice the muscles that control my tail feathers are firing and causing the feathers to spread, my chest expands and my wings raise above my midline, here we go.