T here’s this watercolour painting I can’t stop looking at by Neville W Cayley, one of the early figures of the Australian twitcher movement. Produced some time in the 1930s, it depicts a brace of glossy black cockatoos sat in a line on a branch. Three of them are captured in profile, looking rather stately: you can see the yellow trifle of feathers around the neck of the female glossies, the shock of red in the tail of the gents, all those blueish wings.

But then there’s the glossy in the middle. Head tilted to the side, its neck craning, it is looking straight out – at Cayley, probably. And also, I can’t help but feel, looking at us now in the year 2025, as we prepare to vote for the Guardian’s Australian bird of the year. A look rich in curiosity and humour, eyes winking, which doesn’

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