At the present the days begin and end with the larrikin operatic of the currawong, a bandit bird that makes the historical decision to populate this country with convicts seem not so much prescient as ordained. Like quite a few of the local avians they are carnivores and are in the habit of leaving bits of bodies in remembered places for later. They are also social birds and the calling morning and evening is them telling their fellows about waking up and going to rest. Despite my generalised sympatico for their tribe I can't help thinking there is something alien about birds as there is about reptiles. The logic of their association escapes me: I understand more when my green cloudy looks direct into the beady eye of lizard or bird than I do when I overhear-or-see some interaction between saurian and saurian, bird and bird. The other afternoon a couple of currawong were gurgling avidly together over some morsel in the flowering gum out the front, so enticing it required a perch and further anticipation ... first one, then the other, elected the balcony where I was as their lounging spot. Each banked my way before croaking alarmedly and pulling out; from both I got the peculiar yellow eye they give. It is like being looked at by one of the Martians in Spielberg's War of the Worlds. A gaze in which none of your self-identifiers is evident. The alien sees you as alien and at that moment you are undeniably so, even to yourself. Aha ... ! you think. So that's what I am. One of those ...