They are hard to miss. Rainbow lorikeets come darting through the trees like tiny explosions of colour – green, blue, orange and yellow in a combination that almost seems too vivid to have been created by nature.
The first thing I do in the morning, as the sun comes up, is look out of the bathroom window. The lorikeets are usually sitting in the palm tree or the jacaranda outside. They are a daily reminder that although big cities can look much the same, and although life in Australia may not feel all that different from life in Denmark, something here is fundamentally different: the nature and wildlife.
I can stand there for a long time just watching them. They hang acrobatically from the branches, chase each other away from the best flowers and argue noisily, as if every tree contains some urgent dispute that simply has to be settled there and then.
For me, they have already become part of the sounds and colours of Sydney. Exotic and unfamiliar to my eyes – yet so ordinary here that the locals barely seem to notice them.
Is it any wonder that morning has become my favourite time of day?
