The Birds!

Just as we crossed over the state border to Victoria we camped for the night in this seemingly idyllic spot by the river:

Little did we know, it was about to turn into a scene from my mum's favourite Hitchcock film.

At first we only put the inside layer of the tent up, because the flies are really annoying over here so if they get too bad you can escape to the tent but still have the benefit of the daylight and not getting too hot in there.

A lovely little bird came hopping over. I thought we had made a friend... and then he spied a loose thread on the tent and started pulling on it! Mathias wanted to shoo him away but I knew he was just doing it to build his nest so I told Mathias to leave him to it because "it's for the babies!!"

Tent Stealer, as I have now named that bird species, flew off with his new treasure and we continued sitting happily... until he came back and started pulling all the threads out of the tent! Soon we were going to have no tent left! So I finally gave in and let Mathias scare him away.

Here is Tent Stealer in action. You can't see it too well on the photo but he has a bunch of our tent in his beak:

We put the outer part of the tent on to stop any more tent stealing then set about making dinner (chips and beans! It was so good!) when we got two new friends. A different species of bird this time - it has a really beautiful voice but it is black and has red eyes so they are kind of freaky. They kept trying to sneak over to the stove to grab our food! Anyone that knows me understands that you do not mess with me when I am hungry! I was having none of this! I took over the bird scaring responsibilities whilst Mathias cooked. When we had shooed one of them away he immediately went and sat on the bonnet of the car and did a massive poo on it. I guess it's the birds' version of giving someone the middle finger. We ate in relative peace after that and then went to bed.

Fast forward to the next morning: we ate peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast and then started packing up the tent, leaving the car boot open so that we could put everything away. When we were distracted the birds hopped into the car and went straight for our food box - they must have been watching us have breakfast because they knew exactly where to find our loaf of bread! Mathias went to chase them out (after I'd taken a photo, of course. Priorities!) but one of them panicked and ended up going further into the car and kept smashing himself against the windows to try to get out! We opened a door and he finally escaped but, as I discovered a few days later, not before crapping all over the car.