The Spanish Ambassador came to visit every morning through winter as I stirred the porridge—just before it was time to wake everybody up. Snuffling into the necks of sleeping children, flapping back quilts, tugging at big toes, letting in movement and noise in readiness for action. But this ritual happened in the still part of the day. It was the same every day. First he would flop onto the bough of a nearby Japanese maple; then, with a kind of casual precision, he would fly straight at the window to land on the narrow ledge before bringing one yellow eye, and then the other, up to the glass. He was inspecting me, and I was inspecting him. It didn’t matter how vigorously I stirred the pot—he was undeterred. But if I broke protocol by opening a cupboard or turning on a tap, he was off: back to the bough for indignant preening, or away; gone from the kitchen window until the next day.

Even before the Spanish Ambassador singled me out for scrutiny, I had special affection for the pied currawong. I recognised it by its call: that unmistakable echoing—spooky and cheerful, spooky and cheerful—among the plane trees as I left my office to meet friends for a drink on a long summer evening, or hurried home in the already-dark of a winter night. By the time my daily commute was no longer ten minutes of bicycle coasting to the edge of Brunswick but a V/Line train expedition to the mountains, the number of pied currawongs inhabiting the grounds and parks around my work seemed to have grown, steadily and reliably, every year.