Rain birds: rain!

The channel billed cuckoos have been extremely raucous over the past few days, irritatingly so just before day break at about 4.30/5am. There must be half a dozen or so that are roosting close to our place and they begin their morning by sounding like they are being collectively strangled. Which, as a matter of fact, I would like to...sometimes. well in the mornings, anyway. They fly inelegantly overhead at various times of the day, announcing themselves well before you actually see them. Maybe they are telling each other where the best nests are to lay their eggs in. If you know what these birds look like you would appreciate what an absolute shock it must be to a raven or currawong or whatever other unfortunate bird becomes the unsuspecting surrogate parent to this large and let's face it, not entirely attractive bird.
Now another name for this species is rain bird, and eevrytime I hear them I think..'agh they must know through some inne mechanism encoded in ancient DNA that it is about to rain...this is good because we need it deperately'...but no...they get it wrong every bloody day.
And it is dry again. We received only 38mm for November and if we don't get 2omm at least in the next week or so we are really going to brown off in a big way. Today Shane and I shifted two of our tree ferns to a new location because they just couldn't cope with the dry winds and harsh sunshine. Rain. Please. Go on.