A little box of joy came into my life at just the right time

Fionn O'Donoghue livestreams the goings-on of two bluetit birds living in his garden in Ireland. (YouTube: Fionn O'Donoghue) Link copiedShareShare articlePerhaps the demise of peak television is to blame, but the most interesting thing I watch these days is live-streamed to me from inside a tiny wooden nesting box in a small garden in County Galway in Ireland. There, a pair of bluetit birds, as elegant and perky as our own superb blue wrens, have filled a little nesting box with moss, fluff and soft foliage, and have laid and hatched a clutch of six eggs, while a hidden camera broadcasts their ordinary miracle to the world. The followers of wildlife documentarian Fionn O'Donoghue voted to name the birds Lapis and Lazuli, and now we are a quiet and anonymous community of self-selected aunties and uncles nervously waiting to see if this devoted couple can raise their little chicks to fledging. It's a threshold moment in adulthood, when you realise that the life of birds interests you far more than the life of most people. The twitcher state seems to be an epigenetic change in our DNA, triggered by that feeling of utter despair that anyone older than 35 knows. And that feeling hits a little harder now that the only true saint walking this earth, Sir David Attenborough, turned 100 just last week and must surely leave us soon — a reality that brings me to tears of terror and loss even as I write this. I do not know how we will survive, how we will save this blue-green home of ours without him. So, this little box of joy came into my life at just the right time. It is a microcosm, a mini-exemplar of what a small amount of local effort can do to help fix some of our damage to the natural world. The nesting places for birds like these have disappeared through felling and deforestation, with fewer of the hollows and tree holes in which they prefer to make homes. So, each spring, O'Donoghue builds nesting boxes and installs cameras to record the spring activities of the local birds. If you buy him a coffee, he'll have cash to install a few more. Natural history broadcaster Sir David Attenborough turns 100 today. We look back at his work and interviews to capture some of his wisdom and endless sense of wonder. I love these little birds. I have the live-stream YouTube page bookmarked on my desktop; I mostly only get to see the mum's tail gently rising and falling with her breath as she sleeps snuggled down in her fluffy nest in total darkness while I watch from the other side of the world. It's Beatrix Potter for the YouTube generation, complete with wily magpies trying to shove their wickedly sharp beaks into the nesting boxes, and the last of the eggs seemingly refusing to hatch… until they finally do. Now, the race is on to get the featherless chicks fed, grown and fledged before a cold snap or other predators can get them. It's a heart-stopping thing, opening the live-stream each day and wondering if I can still count one, two, three, four, five… hang on… yes six! Six scrawny little chicks, their yellow mouths wide and yowling for food. And as an antidote to the human problem of unfair mental load, I can tell you the male partner, Lazuli, spends his days hunting, ferrying and feeding food to both mum and chicks and I never see Lapis having to remind him. Just saying. Those who watch are an adoring community, but our love is not universal, as Attenborough has spent his life recording. The dog behaviourist and host of Animal SOS Australia, Lara Shannon, recently recounted an incident at a Brighton park, where she saw a group of kids chasing a mother duck and her baby ducklings, as they shouted, "Kick them! Kick them! Kick the little ones!" Lara, playing the role of all of us that morning, told the kids off and warned their mum that they were trying to kick baby ducklings. The mother shrugged — "whaddya gonna do" — and instead blew Lara a passive-aggressive kiss. Start your weekend with the best of the ABC's journalism, presented by Virginia Trioli. Discover compelling features, big ideas and revealing analysis to understand the stories that matter to Australians. Even though every fibre of me is screaming that any kid who wants to kick baby ducklings is a born sociopath, I'll be reasonable here and excuse child pack mentality. But one thing is certain: the special exception to which the kids' mum felt the brats were entitled means they will for sure grow up to be the monsters who make life hell for other kids at school and will eventually join the realms of the finance and tech bros who have ruined our planet. The other certainty is that this blithe mum has, of course, sat her little darlings down in front of at least one David Attenborough show in their lives so she could have a quiet glass of white wine. I guess they must never have watched to the end. Closer to home, a foolish but optimistic spotted dove has decided to build an autumn nest and lay winter eggs in the Japanese maple right outsi

A little box of joy came into my life at just the right time

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