For a long time, I thought that I and my fellow obsessive twitchers were the only ones for whom birds made life worth living. The sheer delight birds brought to my life was both the remedy for – and perhaps instigator of – the social awkwardness of my teen years. But then in my tumultuous 20s, when everyone I knew seemed to be going through some sort of painful, emotional turmoil, it dawned on me that birds could have powerful significance beyond the bird-nerds.
One day I got a lift with a friend who was really struggling. As she sped through inner city streets sobbing uncontrollably, things started resembling that scene from Vanilla Sky when Cameron Diaz drives Tom Cruise off a bridge. I persuaded her to pull over, and we parked beneath some trees. As I sat, clueless about how to ease her distress, a white-plumed honeyeater flitted down and started hopping around in front of us, searching for insects.
