I still remember the first time I ever saw a red-capped robin. It was in the mid-90s, and the bird was in the garden of my parents’ holiday house about 45 minutes inland from the New South Wales Far South Coast town of Bermagui. It should not have been there.

Red-capped robins are inland birds: among Australia’s ‘red’ robins in the genus Petroica they fill the semi-arid niche, taking over in the inland zones from their more coastal, tree-loving cousins the scarlet robins and flame robins. On a trip to the Mallee in the north of Victoria four years ago I saw them everywhere. There are one or two places in Melbourne, where I live now, where you can reliably see them, but those birds are the exception rather than the rule. But birds are highly mobile, and when conditions are bad in one place they’ll readily up stumps and relocate. Twitchers—that subset of birdwatchers ready to drop everything and travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres for a rare sighting—often follow the birds: reports filter out through word-of-mouth, or on the internet, and tours are organised, petrol is bought, binoculars are packed, and away they go.