Superb Fairy-wren
The Little Blue Birds
Some birds become woven into your life long before you ever stop to think about why.
For me, the Superb Fairy-wren is one of those.
My grandmother loved them.
She painted them on china, collected little artworks and objects with fairy-wrens on them, and they seemed to appear again and again in the things she chose and shared.
Because she loved them, I noticed them too.
There is something about another person’s affection that can attach itself permanently to a thing. A flower, a song, a particular colour. Or a bird.
Years later, completely separate from Grandma and those memories, there was another little wren.
A few years ago at Mum and Dad’s place, one of their gumboots was sitting on the front porch.
Perched right on the edge of it was a Superb Fairy-wren.
It was such an ordinary little scene.
A gumboot. A front porch. A tiny bird.
But I remember it.
Perhaps because fairy-wrens have a way of making ordinary places feel briefly enchanted.
They turn up around gardens, lawns, shrubs, fences and porches, moving through the familiar parts of our lives as though they have always belonged there.
And perhaps that is why I still think of Grandma when I see them.
The little bird on Mum and Dad’s gumboot came many years later, in a completely different part of my life.
But somehow the species has gathered all of those moments together.
Grandma painting them carefully onto china.
The little fairy-wren things she collected.
Those familiar blue birds appearing again and again.
A tiny wren perched on a gumboot on Mum and Dad’s porch.
And now, years later again, me slowing one down long enough to paint it.
There are birds we go looking for, and there are birds that simply keep appearing throughout our lives.
The Superb Fairy-wren has always felt like the latter.
A small blue thread running quietly through the years.
From the Bird Postcard Club
These adorable wrens inspired my September Feather & Perch Bird Postcard, created as part of the monthly Bird Postcard Club.