Yesterday, I woke to a cold, damp Canberra morning – and silence. The trees around my home were empty of feathered silhouettes. Even the usual bright-eyed, warble-voiced magpies were absent.
The next morning, they were back. I don’t know why they went AWOL. But their absence felt like a taste of what might come as the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu spreads in Australia, affecting both birds and mammals.
