When I wrote about spring, with the sap rising and the birds, bees and bugs pursuing procreation with the singlemindedness of teenage boys’ quest to cast off their virginity, I wasn’t wrong. But I’m happy to concede that it wasn’t the whole picture. Or maybe it was at the time, but things have moved on in a few short weeks and it’s pretty clear from observing activity in our 1/3-acre patch that, presumably having satisfied their drive to meet and mate, much of the living world has now turned its attention to another of the seven deadly sins: gluttony.

Yup, everything that moves is moving in the direction of its own species’ favourite dinner. The gardens of Braidwood offer a smorgasbord of slugs, bugs, beetles and grubs — a veritable buffet of invertebrate delicacies with a side of seeds and shoots. And they’re often foraging for more than one: it’s obvious from the racket in the garden and the harassed air of some of the birds (to anthropomorphise), their chicks are ruling the roost with demands to be fed.

The magpies are the loudest and most visible. The postie has been regularly buzzed by a very swift and committed magpie mum, and the loud insistent cries emanating from the big old fir tree in the middle of the garden for the last week or two are clearly from hungry baby birds.

Then yesterday, two fuzzy grey juveniles appeared in the garden and took up residence on our washing line. They sat and cried loudly and insistently until their agitated parent brought them a beakload of tasty slugs, and – just like my sister and I when we were children – while one received attention, the other protested all the louder. I’m not familiar with the dialect, but the message was clear: “that’s not fair!” “what about me?” and so on.

Then there are the butterflies. If the birds are into their food, these guys are the dedicated drinkers. They’re latching onto blossoms all over the place at the moment, sometimes four different species in seven or eight iterations, just in the parts of garden visible from the veranda. You can see them getting their proboscises (probosces?) deep into the nectar, one flower after another, before flitting drunkenly away with no apparent flight plan.

While I was skulking about trying to capture some Caper Whites in flight yesterday, our old friend the Crimson Rosella alighted on a branch really close by. It’s one of those things Alanis Morrissette insists are ironic: you can spend weeks trying to look like a bush in the hopes some feathery being will hop close enough to fill the frame, and then when you’re looking for something totally different, one of those buggers will make itself comfortable so close to you that you’re hard pressed to fit it all in.

Having taken a few shots, I sneaked off and watched as the Rosella proceeded to comb the unmown lawn for grass seeds, holding the stalks with one gnarled claw and tucking in like a real trencherman. Presumably I’d been trampling over the equivalent of the Rosella’s dining room, and his bold intervention was really just a way of asserting his desire to get at the victuals.

It’s no surprise that the little Silvereyes who hang out in mobs of six or eight are after food. They seem to be systematically quartering the garden, descending on one tree after another and making the leaves quiver as they dip and dart after what look like tiny bugs. They’ll hang upside down, stretch and contort to reach their prey, all the while emitting short chit-chit-chits that make their spasmodic leaps seem even more busy and purposeful.

The little brown birds are all in on the feeding frenzy too, make no mistake. You can see Yellow-Rumped Thornbills, Superb Fairy wrens, and Fairy Gerygones in hot pursuit of those little winged midges they thrive on, exhibiting all the hunting ardour of the big raptors as they stoop on their prey with salivating chops.

Sadly, while I’m sure the blue-tongued skink would be battening on slugs and snails at the moment, it seems the flattened remains we encountered next to the road a couple of days ago were indeed those of my companion from under the deck. I’ll never know whether his tongue was blue – let’s hope a successor will find their way into the garden before too long – as the nauseating Pumba would point out, it’s the circle of life, right?

All in all, the place is like Oktoberfest for birds and beasts. These folks aren’t on any kind of weight management programme – this is all about maximum calories, the more the better, as an imperative governed by survival. The window for getting yourself and your offspring fattened for the winter is narrow and every minute counts. As the Silvereyes demonstrate, once the rain has battered the blossoms off a particular tree, it’s time to move on to a tree with a more calorific ecosystem to plunder.

It’s all very straightforward when you look at it. Life is not complex for the birds and beasts – when the weather’s right, get going with the things you have to do; try not to end up like the blue-tongue on the roadside, and keep going like there’s no tomorrow. Because life is fleeting, no matter what your timescale. Birds and butterflies get it.